{"id":1771,"date":"2023-04-28T10:10:34","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T10:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2026-02-10T18:25:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T18:25:01","slug":"vi-da-servia-a-ucrania-nem-a-revolucao-nem-a-contrarrevolucao-oferecem-uma-saida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/type-dossier\/vi-from-serbia-to-ukraine-neither-the-revolution-nor-the-counter-revolution-offer-a-way-out\/","title":{"rendered":"VI \/ Da S\u00e9rvia \u00e0 Ucr\u00e2nia: Nem a revolu\u00e7\u00e3o nem a contrarrevolu\u00e7\u00e3o oferecem uma sa\u00edda"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date has-small-font-size\"><time datetime=\"2023-04-28T10:10:34+00:00\">abril 28, 2023<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:19px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the left, discussions about the horror unfolding in Ukraine have predictably been reduced to dead-end debates that are easily shut down by angry online mobs \u2013 endless rounds about whether Russia is imperialist (or colonialist), or whether it\u2019s NATO that is.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other questions have surfaced with some frequency: Did NATO \u2018force\u2019 Russia to invade Ukraine with its duplicitous <em>Drang Nach Osten<\/em>? Since NATO has bombed and killed and occupied sovereign countries before, does that make Russia\u2019s aggression in Ukraine somehow more acceptable, a crime of a lesser magnitude? Are calls for peace negotiations necessarily a dog whistle for surrender \u2013 or worse \u2013 an apologia for genocide? And should leftists just accept the horrific loss of human life in Ukraine as \u2018collateral damage\u2019 in the struggle for a glorious multipolar world?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Further, if you are not Ukrainian (or Eastern European), should you even be talking about this at all? Shouldn\u2019t you be deferring to one of the self-appointed spokespersons of the nation, whose interests and slick PR just so happen to overlap with preferences of the West? Finally, who are the real fascists? Here too there is ample disagreement:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/odessas-two-big-differences-and-a-few-small-ones\/\">one Odessan said<\/a> in the aftermath of deadly clashes between pro- and anti-Euromaidan activists that gripped his city in May 2014, \u2018They [his unspecified antagonists] think I am a fascist. I think they are fascists. It\u2019s enough to lose your mind.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Into this maddening public discussion, Volodymyr Ishchenko has contributed something new. Significantly, he has identified the political conflict behind the war in Ukraine. He writes: \u2018The alliance between transnational capital and the professional middle classes in the post-Soviet space, represented politically by pro-Western, NGO-ised civil societies\u2026 presented an\u2026 obstacle to the Russia-led post-Soviet integration. This constituted the main political conflict in the post-Soviet space that culminated in the invasion of Ukraine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The politicisation of the state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, the Western-funded liberal NGO sector has been engaged in what sociologist Marek Mikus \u2013 an expert on Serbia\u2019s civil society \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/slavic-review\/article\/abs\/frontiers-of-civil-society-government-and-hegemony-in-serbia-by-marek-mikus-new-york-berghahn-books-2018-xvi-339-pp-appendix-notes-bibliography-index-illustrations-photographs-figures-tables-maps-13000-hard-bound\/69BFF7F72068C9383B31A1D3E060AE6E\">describes<\/a> as a \u2018hegemonic project of transnationalisation and neoliberalisation.\u2019&nbsp; For instance, under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, this nascent liberal, pro-Western civil society \u2013 composed mostly of an educated middle class with global cultural capital \u2013 represented a direct challenge to the interests of the state; Russia\u2019s political elite perceived this same group as a threat and sought to counter it. In Serbia, a \u2018counter-hegemonic project\u2019 was launched after Milosevic\u2019s fall, which Mikus describes as \u2018a vision of a centralised, sovereign and neotraditionalist nation-state.\u2019 The participants in this conservative counter-hegemonic project, said to enjoy dubious ties to Serbia\u2019s unreformed state security sector, have engaged in various acts of theatrical street violence, most notably the mass rioting that has disrupted the Belgrade Pride Parade, an event organised by Western-funded NGOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oleg Zhuralev adds another important layer to our understanding of similar processes in Russia, linking the state\u2019s conservative \u2018counter-politicisation\u2019 \u2013 in response to the emergence of a politicised anti-Putin protest movement in 2011-2012 \u2013 with the invasion of Ukraine. He notes that, in 2014, this never rose to the level of full domestic mobilisation: there were no right-wing loyalist movements dispatched by the Kremlin to intimidate protesters in the same manner as during what Robert Horvath <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/27975511\">calls<\/a> the \u2018preventative counter-revolution\u2019 of Putin\u2019s second term. Instead, all of this nationalist fervour was directed at Ukraine, culminating in the so-called \u2018Crimean Spring.\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Drawing on Zhuralev\u2019s idea that Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was a reaction to \u2018colour\u2019, or what he and Ishchenko term \u2018maidan\u2019, revolutions in post-Soviet states, we could say that the war in Ukraine is the last and most destructive phase in a long series of \u2018preventative\u2019 and \u2018counter-revolutionary\u2019 actions undertaken by the Kremlin in its efforts to resist Western NGO-isation (and NATO-isation). The current war is directed towards the same goal in Ukraine. Before the full-scale invasion, the Russian political elite\u2019s interests in this conflict were \u2018defended\u2019 by state-controlled nationalist youth movements who terrorised the liberal opposition and \u2018civic movements\u2019 on the streets of Russia and Ukraine. This was first evident in the Kremlin\u2019s response to Ukraine\u2019s Orange Revolution in 2004. In the <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20070927194411\/http:\/www.zn.ua\/1000\/1550\/49482\/\">words<\/a> of the late novelist turned nationalist politician Eduard Limonov, \u2018the authorities were afraid of the Orange Revolution, so they unleashed a civil war in Russia.\u2019 Central to that \u2018civil war\u2019, was a group of Kremlin-controlled neo-Nazis and hooligans, dispatched to prevent Putin\u2019s (mostly liberal) opponents from laying the groundwork for a US-backed colour revolution at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Balkan trajectory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The phenomenon of a state-controlled right-wing in Russia has been described as a form of \u2018managed nationalism\u2019, and indeed some of its most notorious fascists have gone on to participate in the so-called \u2018de-Nazification\u2019 of Ukraine. Among them is Alexander Matyushin, a veteran of the Eurasian Youth Union (ESM). In 2007, the ESM <a href=\"https:\/\/zn.ua\/POLITICS\/sud_zapretil_evraziyskiy_soyuz_molodezhi_za_antiukrainskuyu_deyatelnost.html\">destroyed<\/a> several Ukrainian national symbols at the peak of Hoverla Mountain, tearing down a Ukrainian flag and raising a Eurasian one in its place. Later, they attacked a monument to the Holodomor. In 2011, a court in Kharkiv banned ESM from Ukraine for \u2018anti-Ukrainian activities.\u2019 Along with Russian National Unity and the Russian Imperial Movement, members of ESM were among the first organised groups to fight in Ukraine in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ESM was <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20070927194411\/http:\/www.zn.ua\/1000\/1550\/49482\/\">reportedly established<\/a> as a Kremlin-backed answer to the pro-Western civic youth movement PORA (\u2018It\u2019s Time\u2019), which coordinated much of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. PORA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/bs\/otpor-poma%25C5%25BEe-ukrajincima\/a-2503001\">received training<\/a> from the leaders of Serbia\u2019s student movement Otpor! (\u2018Resistance!\u2019), which had successfully overthrown Slobodan Milosevic four years prior with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/slavic-review\/article\/abs\/frontiers-of-civil-society-government-and-hegemony-in-serbia-by-marek-mikus-new-york-berghahn-books-2018-xvi-339-pp-appendix-notes-bibliography-index-illustrations-photographs-figures-tables-maps-13000-hard-bound\/69BFF7F72068C9383B31A1D3E060AE6E\">unprecedented foreign support<\/a>: Western donors gave various actors in Serbia $80 million in direct support for democracy assistance in the months leading up to the \u2018electoral revolution\u2019 alone.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matyushin was also a member of the Kremlin-sponsored neo-Nazi outfit Russky Obraz, which also found its inspiration in Serbia. The group was formed after its leaders met the original Serbian Obraz, a clerical-fascist organisation with covert ties to Serbia\u2019s deep state. Matyushin went on to become a \u2018rebel field commander\u2019 in Eastern Ukraine; he has also been described as <a href=\"https:\/\/maidantranslations.com\/2015\/02\/17\/meet-one-of-the-dnr-founders-a-famous-donetsk-neo-nazi-alexander-matyushin\/\">one of the founders of the Donetsk People\u2019s Republic<\/a>. Another veteran of Russky Obraz, Dimitry Steshin, is now a prominent war correspondent for the Russian tabloid <em>Komsomolskaya Pravda<\/em>, for whom he is currently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kp.ru\/daily\/author\/182\/\">covering<\/a> the conflict in Ukraine from an aggressively nationalist perspective.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The phenomenon of far-right extremist groups becoming fighters in paramilitary units and propagandists in wartime was also a feature of the breakup of Yugoslavia, when ultranationalist hooligans from Serbia with unofficial ties to the state fought in wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Infamously, paramilitary leader Arkan drew from football holligan firms to recruit for his \u2018Arkan Tigers\u2019, which has been implicated in war crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Serbian paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other major point Ishchenko makes, about the <em>class conflict<\/em> behind the war in Ukraine, is less convincing. He describes this conflict as a fight between \u2018Russian political capitalists interested in territorial expansion to sustain the rate of rent, on the one hand, and transnational capital allied with the professional middle classes \u2014 which were excluded from political capitalism \u2014 on the other.\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, I want to emphasise that I think he correctly identifies the two class alliances in competition here. Indeed, it is precisely \u2018transnational capital allied with the professional middle classes, which were excluded from political capitalism\u2019 that have tended to be the main beneficiaries of the so-called \u2018colour revolutions\u2019 in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. But his main point, that Russia invaded Ukraine because \u2018Russian political capitalists were interested in territorial expansion to sustain the rate of rent,\u2019 does not strike me as quite accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ilya Matveev expertly describes the ways in which the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Russian war in Eastern Ukraine \u2018significantly undermined the position of Russian capital\u2019, thus concluding that these actions cannot be explained \u2018according to any economic logic.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, it had to be something else. As Matveev writes, \u2018from Putin\u2019s own subsequent explanations, one could gather that the annexation of Crimea was the product of a deeply held belief in the inevitability of an all-out confrontation with the West\u2019. I think that this gets closer to the truth. It is also possible to chart the collision course towards violent confrontation in Ukraine, which, at a certain point in time, acquired its own logic of inevitability.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Serbia once again offers a historical precedent: at the turn of the millennium, after the US had led the NATO bombing of Serbia (then rump Yugoslavia), granted unprecedented financial and logistical support to the youth activists who overthrew Milosevic, and assisted in the creation of a UN protectorate of Kosovo (an erstwhile province of Serbia), a new paradigm was created for the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this new world, human rights would trump national sovereignty, and NATO would trump the UN. Humanitarian intervention, turned into doctrine through the \u2018Responsibility to Protect\u2019, would be the new \u2018Western man\u2019s burden\u2019, necessitating savage wars of peace. The American poet Robert Hayden has <a href=\"https:\/\/brill.com\/display\/title\/22718\">termed<\/a> this emergent morality \u2018humanrightism\u2019, which he describes as an updated version of just war theory, and a \u2018secular humanist version of God\u2019s work.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, in 1999, <em>Human Rights Watch<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/brill.com\/display\/title\/22718\">announced<\/a> \u2018the beginning of a new era for the human rights movement\u2019. Western commentators were euphoric. Vaclav Havel <a href=\"https:\/\/brill.com\/display\/title\/22718\">remarked<\/a> that \u2018human beings are more important than the state\u2026 the idol of state sovereignty must inevitably dissolve\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the year of the 50<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of its creation, NATO \u2013 founded as a Cold War alliance \u2013 had forged a new raison d\u2019etre. But <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1374&amp;context=vjtl\">for critics<\/a>, the bombing of Serbia, which had been undertaken without approval of the UN Security Council, had \u2018called into question the authority and viability of the UN Charter system\u2019, while Kosovo\u2019s secession in 2008 had \u2018dealt another blow to the post-war legal rules and institutions for controlling and mitigating great power rivalry\u2019. Critically, Russia did not oppose many of these new principles as such, but rather opposed their selective application for the benefit of the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This, I argue, forms the broader background to the conflict. It is also the point at which we can begin to observe Russia\u2019s increasingly bellicose reactions to the introduction of a new US-led international order standing in direct opposition to Russian dreams of re-establishing itself as a great power, thus giving rise to a new multipolar world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>NGOs and the de-development of Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the vanguard of the liberal campaign for human rights, freedom, and democracy stood liberal NGOs. As National Endowment for Democracy co-founder Mark Palmer told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: \u2018NGOS\u2026 are the frontline fighters of freedom.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, Russia likely noted that a rapid proliferation of NGOs preceded the so-called \u2018electoral revolutions\u2019 in their neighbourhood. In Serbia, about 500 NGOs were established during the period 1994-97 alone; over the course of the next three years, in the period that immediately preceded the revolution of 5 October, more than 1,300 new NGOs emerged. And in Ukraine, the number of officially registered NGOs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wilsoncenter.org\/publication\/kennan-cable-no25-wake-call-for-ukraines-civil-society\">nearly doubled<\/a> from 40,000 in 2004, to nearly 80,000, in 2014, before the Euromaidan.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Russia\u2019s preventative counter-revolution included a multi-pronged assault on the pro-Western liberal NGO sector \u2013 the local representatives of transnational capital \u2013 and, in 2012, Russia\u2019s notorious \u2018foreign agent law\u2019 was introduced, clearly targeting those civil society organisations and associated media that receive their funding from Western donors. At the same time, Putin\u2019s vision was to establish a \u2018real\u2019 Russian patriotic civil society rooted in respect for state sovereignty. As Julie Hemmet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/48610482?read-now=1&amp;seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents\">writes<\/a>: \u2018The Putin administration\u2019s appropriation of the civil society concept clearly advances a critique of foreign intervention.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While it may be tempting to view the liberal NGO sector and their Western donors as strictly benevolent actors (especially when contrasted here with odious far-right movements), to do so would be to neglect their political problems and deleterious effects, especially in wartime Ukraine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/09692290.2023.2170444\">Recent work<\/a> by Oleksandr Svitych on the role of USAID in Ukraine\u2019s Donbas offers an important corrective to the myth of that uncomplicated righteousness. Svitych writes that the COVID-19 pandemic and war have naturally demanded an aid response to save lives and restore livelihoods, but that \u2018Western-funded NGOs, as one of the key agents in Ukrainian politics, have rushed in to occupy this niche\u2014a move enabled by the post-independence erosion of state capacity to deliver social assistance to Ukrainian citizens\u2019. In other words, neoliberal reforms enacted under the tutelage of international financial institutions have left Ukraine without a robust state precisely when it needs it most, contributing to its de-development rather than development. Svitych describes this as violence in a different form: \u2018Violent neoliberalism has been an inherent characteristic of development in eastern Ukraine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Further, he asserts that the \u2018marketisation of the Ukrainian economy and society promoted by these agencies is implicated in the armed conflict and violence ongoing after the Maidan protests of 2013\u20132014\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 2013-2014, the EU and the IMF had imposed strict austerity and neoliberal reforms, including privatisation and extensive deregulation \u2013 with devastating effects. Ukraine also faced mounting debt and high rates of unemployment at this time, with seemingly no end in sight. Heikki Patomaki <a href=\"https:\/\/patomaki.fi\/Disintegrative_Tendencies_in_GPE.pdf\">writes<\/a> that, under these conditions, everyday life becomes increasingly uncertain. And this has the potential to endanger social integration and even threaten identity, allowing \u2018Manichean narratives\u2019 to flourish.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, Olena Lyubchenko describes Russia\u2019s efforts to institute another flavour of neoliberalism, with \u2018traditional values centred on the heterosexual family.\u2019 She also describes recent pro-natalist policies aimed at women and \u2018the militarisation of motherhood.\u2019 She emphasises that the imposition of a neo-traditionalist order occurred in tandem with the \u2018monetisation of welfare benefits and a decline in state spending.\u2019 In such circumstances, \u2018the family, literally, becomes a direct site of financial accumulation which feeds state militarisation\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Liberal NGOs and Western donors would like to think that they can provide a bold answer to this, but what they have tended to offer is a more veiled form of violent coercion. As Svitych <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/09692290.2023.2170444\">writes<\/a>, USAID in Donbas employs the neoliberal therapy-speak of \u2018vulnerability\u2019, \u2018resilience\u2019, \u2018inclusion\u2019, and \u2018gender-based violence\u2019, which \u2018constructs people as vulnerable, businesses as excluded from the market, and women as in need of empowerment\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What \u2018empowerment\u2019 means in this instance is that women in a region deeply affected by a decade of war must be reimagined in terms of <em>human capital.<\/em> Women must be empowered because \u2018removing gender inequality can add up to $28 trillion in global annual GDP by 2025\u2019, and \u2018some studies\u2019 indicate that \u2018women entrepreneurs grew their revenues 1.5 times faster and created jobs twice as fast as male entrepreneurs\u2019 This is the \u2018gender equality\u2019 championed by liberal NGOs: the transformation of \u2018vulnerable\u2019 women into entrepreneurial subjects, \u2018inclusion\u2019 in a new dehumanising language.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, in the end, it would appear that neither the revolution nor the counter-revolution offer Ukraine a pathway out. And the revolution still struggles to make itself worthy of the name \u2018dignity\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the left, discussions about the horror unfolding in Ukraine have predictably been reduced to dead-end debates that are easily shut down by angry online mobs \u2013 endless rounds about whether Russia is imperialist (or colonialist), or whether it\u2019s NATO that is.&nbsp; Other questions have surfaced with some frequency: Did NATO \u2018force\u2019 Russia to invade [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"author-name":"Lily Lynch","choose-language":"EN","wds_primary_category":8,"wds_primary_alameda-themes":0,"wds_primary_projects":0,"wds_primary_dynamic-publications-cat":0,"wds_primary_type-tax":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10,140],"alameda-themes":[],"projects":[],"dynamic-publications-cat":[65],"type-tax":[56],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-type-dossier","tag-dossier-part-i","tag-lily-lynch","dynamic-publications-cat-ukraine-dossier","type-tax-geopolitics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22095,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/22095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"alameda-themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/alameda-themes?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"projects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/projects?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"dynamic-publications-cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dynamic-publications-cat?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"type-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alameda.institute\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-tax?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}