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Formål

Forløbet undersøger konkret den amerikanske og den russiske revolution, deres årsager og konsekvenser, samt hvordan man kan forklare historiske forandringer og brud. Et underliggende spørgsmål er således også, hvordan eleverne kan se sig selv som historiske aktører, der kan skabe forandring.

Forløbet er både til historie B på hf og A på stx og bringer følgende faglige mål i spil:

at skelne mellem forskellige typer af forklaringer på samfundsmæssige forandringer

at reflektere over mennesket som historieskabt og historieskabende i spil.

at diskutere periodiseringsprincipper (kun A-niveau)

Kernestofmæssigt berøres 'politiske og sociale revolutioner' (A-niveau), samt 'styreformer' (både A- og B- niveau).

Forløbet er bygget op som en vekselvirkning mellem nedslag i de to konkrete revolutioner og mere metodisk-teoretiske greb. Ved at bringe mere end en enkelt revolution i spil indfanges forskellige perioder, ideologier og aktører. Der er dog et fælles fokus på politiske revolutioner, der kobler til kernestofpunktet 'styreformer'. Eleverne kan gennem de mere revolutionsteoretiske overvejelser også reflektere over andre former for revolution, herunder sociale og kulturelle. Forløbet er planlagt til 8 moduler á 100 min.

Forløbets opbygning

Her finder du indholdet til de 8 moduler.

Modul 1 - introduktion til forløbet: Hvad er en revolution?

Problemstilling: Hvad er en revolution?

Materiale: Små videoer, evt. såkaldte explainere, der forklarer forskellige revolutionsteorier, årsager til revolutioner og definitioner på, hvad revolutioner er. Det er vigtigt, at videoerne ikke fokuserer på gennemgang af konkrete revolutioner, men netop rummer bud på forudsætninger, årsager og evt. overvejelser om, hvorfor ikke alle politiske/ sociale bevægelser og protester fører til revolution. Forslag:
Overblik revolutionsteorier: Revolutioners fælles karakteristika: Hvorfor nogle politiske bevægelser lykkes, og andre ikke:
Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Hjemmefra har eleverne haft til opgave at overveje, hvad en revolution er (noter medbringes). Disse overvejelser er afsættet for introduktionen til forløbet, idet timen starter med, at eleverne skal ud på gulvet og nå at drøfte overvejelserne med tre forskellige makkere.

På den baggrund er alle elever rustet til at bidrage med bud. Alle bud skrives på en fælles tavle eller andet, der muliggør et fælles overblik og lærerstyret opsamling, der danner en bro til det næste.

Klassen ser de af læreren udvalgte videoer, og eleverne tager noter til spørgsmålet: hvad er en revolution, og hvordan kan revolutioner forklares?

På baggrund heraf etableres en fælles (teoretisk) forståelsesramme, fx opstillet i et skema, hvor de forskellige forklaringsmåder oplistes. Eleverne kan evt. udarbejde figurer, der illustrerer disse. Forskellige kategorier bør indgå: aktør, struktur, økonomiske, politiske, sociale, naturgrundlagsmæssige osv.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Afhængigt af klassens niveau kan læreren overveje at lade forskellige elevgrupper se forskellige videoer og efterfølgende vidensdele i matrixstrukturer. Ligeledes kan stilladseringen af elevernes noter op- og nedskaleres afhængigt af, hvor stor kompleksitet klassen kan mestre.

Modul 2: Den amerikanske revolution i 1700-tallet - årsagerne

Problemstilling: Hvad gik den amerikanske revolution ud på, og hvordan kan den forklares?

Materiale: Fremstillingstekst, der forklarer baggrunden for uafhængighedskrigen og dens udfald. Dette materiale kan enten rumme citater fra fx Uafhængighedserklæringen eller suppleres med et illustrerende uddrag herfra (altså som kildetekst). Pointen er, at materialet tilsammen kan bruges til at besvare dagens problemstilling, og fokus er ikke på det kildeanalytiske arbejde.

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Eleverne har læst materialet hjemmefra og skal i timerne bearbejde dette ved hjælp af 'årsagskort': en samling af små kort med kortfattede udsagn, der hver især rummer én konkret, afgrænset årsag til revolutionen, fx 'Kolonierne var vrede over Stempelafgiften (1765)', 'Kolonierne ønskede politisk repræsentation', 'Kolonisterne var inspirerede af Oplysningstidens tanker´ osv.

Det er afgørende, at kortene tilsammen rummer flere forskellige typer af årsagsforklaringer, jvf. ovenfor. Eleverne skal ordne kortene i flere omgange efter forskellige principper: forskellige typer af årsagsforklaringer, prioriteret efter vigtighed eller andet. På baggrund af elevernes arbejde med årsagskortene drøftes årsagerne i fællesskab på klassen.

Læreren kan her samle trådene på en fælles tavle samtidig med, at diskussionerne om fx vægtningen af forskellige forklaringer indfanges. Som afsluttende opsamling vendes blikket mod de revolutionsteorier, klassen arbejdede med i det foregående modul. Eleverne skal her prøve at koble deres årsagsforklaringer til forskellige teorier og evt. diskutere, hvilke teorier der bedst indfanger den amerikanske revolution.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Udover at kortene konkretiserer årsagerne, giver øvelsen eleverne indblik i fagets årsagsbegreb. Ingen af kortene rummer således 'forkerte' svar. Læreren kan overveje, om det er eleverne selv (og ikke læreren), der skal lave kortene ud fra dagens tekst og efterfølgende bytte kort med andre grupper. Øvelsen er svær og kræver, at eleverne har læst og forstået dagens materiale. Kortene kan også bruges som hjælp til at strukturere lektien, der således først læses på klassen efter kort-øvelsen.

Modul 3: Den amerikanske revolution i 1700-tallet - konsekvenserne

Problemstilling: Hvad var konsekvenserne af den amerikanske revolution - og for hvem?

Materiale: Fremstillingstekst der gør det klart, at revolutionen førte til skabelsen af USA og den første demokratiske forfatning i verden, men som også breder perspektiverne ud ift. hvordan de amerikanske samfund forandrede sig og for hvem, fx med inddragelse af den oprindelige befolkning og den slavegjorte arbejdskraft.

Dette kan suppleres af kildemateriale, der understøtter og illustrerer denne flerperspektivistiske pointe, fx billedkilder som malerier af 'The Founding Fathers'. Igen er det ikke det kildeanalytiske arbejde, der er i centrum, selvom det er til stede.

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Eleverne har læst fremstillingsteksten hjemmefra og skal i timerne bearbejde den med fokus på brud og kontinuitet. Elevgrupper udstyres igen med en bunke (lærerproducerede) kort, med en række fiktive udsagn fra forskellige aktører (politikeren, den slavegjorte, konen til plantageejeren osv.), hvor de udtaler sig om, hvordan/hvorvidt deres livsvilkår har forandret sig. Eleverne sorterer kortene i to bunker: brud & kontinuitet, og med afsæt i de samtaler, de har i grupperne, drøftes på klasseniveau, hvad revolutionen betød (virkningshistorie). Her kan læreren hjælpe med at strukturere konsekvenserne, fx i forskellige samfundslag, ligesom der kan skelnes mellem mere idehistoriske og sociale konsekvenser.

Modulet afsluttes med, at eleverne individuelt skriver et postkort til deres bedsteforældre, hvor de forklarer, hvad den amerikanske revolution gik ud på, og hvad konsekvenserne var. På den måde får eleverne samlet op på den viden, de har oparbejdet.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Ud over det konkrete arbejde med brud og kontinuitet sætter citatkortene fokus på selve begreberne og kan således styrke elevernes forståelse af, hvad det vil sige at arbejde med historisk forandring. Afsenderen af det afsluttende postkort er primært tænkt som eleven selv, men man kan evt. udstyre eleverne med forskellige roller, hvis man vil have det flerperspektivistiske aspekt med her. Dette kan fremhæve modulets fokus på brud og kontinuitet.

Modul 4: Den russiske revolution i 1900-tallet - årsager

Problemstilling: Hvad gik den russiske revolution ud på, og hvordan kan den forklares?

Materiale: Fremstillingstekst, der forklarer baggrunden for den russiske zars fald, bolsjevikkernes magtovertagelse og visioner, borgerkrigen osv. Dette materiale kan enten rumme citater fra fx Lenin eller suppleres med andre kilder, fx en revolutionsplakat, der tydeliggør og illustrerer de revolutionære visioner om at gøre en ende på zarstyret, kapitalismen osv. og bringe arbejderne/folket til magten. Pointen er, at materialet tilsammen kan bruges til at besvare dagens problemstilling, og fokus er ikke på det kildeanalytiske arbejde.

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Struktureringen af modulet er den samme som i modul 2: Eleverne har læst materialet hjemmefra og skal i timerne bearbejde dette ved hjælp af 'årsagskort': en samling af små kort med kortfattede udsagn, der hver især udgør én konkret, afgrænset årsag til revolutionen, fx 'Zaren havde bragt Rusland ind i 1. Verdenskrig', 'Den russiske befolkning sultede', 'Lenin bragte den tyske socialisme til Rusland' osv. Det er afgørende, at kortene tilsammen rummer flere forskellige typer af årsagsforklaringer, jvf. ovenfor.

Eleverne skal ordne kortene i flere omgange efter forskellige principper: forskellige typer af årsagsforklaringer, prioriteret efter vigtighed eller andet. På baggrund af elevernes arbejde med årsagskortene, drøftes årsagerne i fællesskab på klassen.

Læreren kan her samle trådene på en fælles tavle, samtidig med, at diskussionerne om fx vægtningen af forskellige forklaringer indfanges. Som afsluttende opsamling vendes blikket mod de revolutionsteorier, klassen arbejdede med i det foregående modul. Eleverne skal her prøve at koble deres årsagsforklaringer til forskellige teorier og evt. diskutere, hvilke teorier, der bedst indfanger den russiske revolution.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Udover at kortene konkretiserer årsagerne, giver øvelsen eleverne indblik i fagets årsagsbegreb. Ingen af kortene rummer således 'forkerte' svar. Fordi eleverne har prøvet øvelsen før, kan læreren igen overveje, om det er eleverne selv (og ikke læreren), der skal lave kortene ud fra dagens tekst og efterfølgende bytte kort med andre grupper. Øvelsen er dog fortsat svær og kræver, at eleverne har læst og forstået dagens materiale. Kortene kan også bruges som hjælp til at strukturere lektien, der således først læses på klassen efter kort-øvelsen.

Modul 5: Den russiske revolution i 1900-tallet - konsekvenser

Problemstilling: Hvad var konsekvenserne af den russiske revolution - og for hvem?

Materiale: Fremstillingstekst, der gør det klart, at revolutionen førte til dannelsen af Sovjetunionen, og som både indfanger bestræbelserne på at modernisere og øge den sociale retfærdighed i det russiske samfund og de voldelige og ikke-demokratiske midler, der blev brugt hertil: alfabetiseringsprogrammer, borgerkrig, tvangskollektivisering, kvinderettigheder, partidiktatur osv. Igen er det flerperspektivistiske afgørende: hvordan og for hvem forandredes samfundet?

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Eleverne har læst fremstillingsteksten hjemmefra og skal i timerne bearbejde den med fokus på brud og kontinuitet. Elevgrupper udstyres igen med en bunke kort, hvor der er anført en række fiktive udsagn fra forskellige aktører (Den revolutionære bolsjevik, kulakken, kvinden der har fået adgang til fri abort, virksomhedsejeren der har mistet alt, den sociale rebel der bliver arresteret osv.), hvor de udtaler sig om hvordan/hvorvidt deres livsvilkår har forandret sig.

Eleverne sorterer kortene i to bunker (brud & kontinuitet) og med afsæt i de samtaler, de har i grupperne, drøftes nu, hvad revolutionen betød. Her kan læreren hjælpe med at strukturere konsekvenserne, fx i forskellige samfundslag, ligesom der kan skelnes mellem mere idehistoriske og sociale konsekvenser.

Modulet afsluttes med, at eleverne individuelt igen skriver et postkort til deres bedsteforældre, hvor de forklarer, hvad den russiske revolution gik ud på, og hvad konsekvenserne var. På den måde får eleverne samlet op på den viden de har oparbejdet.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Fordi eleverne har prøvet øvelsen med brud/kontinuitetskort før, kan man lade eleverne supplere de lærerproducerede kort med selvforfattede udsagn. Dette kræver dog tid. Afsenderen af det afsluttende postkort er primært tænkt som eleven selv, men man kan evt. udstyre eleverne med forskellige roller, hvis man vil have det flerperspektivistiske aspekt med her.

Dette kan fremhæve modulets fokus på brud og kontinuitet, men det er ikke afgørende. Da postkortgenren allerede er afprøvet i forløbet, kunne det for variationens skyld fint erstattes med fx et miniradioindslag eller andet, så længe det helt korte format samt remedieringen fastholdes, og eleven således kan frigøre sig en anelse fra en summativt præsterende rolle, hvor produktet kun er rettet mod læreren. Hermed kan det i højere grad indfanges, hvad eleverne har oplevet som mest overraskende, interessant eller opsigtsvækkende, hvilket kan bruges i det videre forløb.

Modul 6: Andre revolutioner

Problemstilling: Hvilke andre revolutioner har forandret verden og hvordan?

Materiale: Elevernes egne researchresultater, evt. organiseret som ressourcerum med links til information om forskellige revolutioner udvalgt af læreren (fx Den franske revolution, Den industrielle revolution, Den seksuelle revolution, Den Cubanske revolution, Den Iranske revolution, Den digitale revolution, Det arabiske forår osv.) På den måde kan læreren styre spredningen ift. revolutionstyper og tidsperioder.

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Efter nedslagene i to politiske revolutioner med internationale konsekvenser skal eleverne nu nå egen hånd undersøge andre former for revolutioner efter eget valg. Arbejdet skal foretages i grupper, som selv står for research og formidling ud fra kriterier fastlagt af læreren: Hvor, hvornår, hvem, hvorfor osv., herunder krav om refleksioner over revolutionsteori.

Dele af researchen kan foregå hjemmefra, men skal så organiseres i grupper forinden. Øvelserne knytter igen an til årsagsforklaringer og forløbets teoretiske kerne. Læreren kan formulere krav om billedmateriale, berømte citater osv.

Grupperne formidler 'deres' revolution i et format, der let kan præsenteres for klassen, hvor en enkelt gruppe særligt har ansvaret for feedback og spørgsmål. På den baggrund tages diskussionen om, hvad en revolution egentlig er (revolutionsteori), op igen.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Idéen med elevernes 'egne' revolutioner er at brede perspektivet ud og øge elevernes motivation for temaet, og det er ikke meningen, at samtlige præsenterede revolutioner er 'pensum' til eksamen.

Man kan derfor også vælge at inddrage revolutioner, der ikke lykkedes og således inddrage et problematiserende blik på mobiliseringsperspektivet. Ift. præsentationerne vil en total matrixstruktur nok tage for lang tid, men de kan godt organiseres, så alle ikke hører alle, men nogle.

Modul 7: Leve revolutionen! - Død over revolutionen!

Problemstilling: Hvilke samfundsomvæltninger vil vi selv tale for - eller imod?

Materiale: Lærerproduceret skabelon, der skal rammesætte og stilladsere elevernes arbejde med selvforfattede taler: Hvad går revolutionen ud på? Hvem skal fældes og hvem skal rejse sig? Hvem skal stoppes og hvad skal besvares? Hertil kommer anvisninger på talens længde, præsentationsformat osv. Ud over dette, sættes ikke nyt materiale i spil, da modulet trækker på viden og begreber fra forløbet indtil videre. Læreren kan evt. give eleverne den lektie, at de skal udarbejde mindmaps eller andre former for overbliksskabende og opsamlende produkter, der forbinder den tilvejebragte viden om fortid med faglige begreber (fx begreber fra revolutionsteorierne).

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Læreren præsenterer rammerne for de taler, eleverne skal forfatte og holde. Her bruges den lærerproducerede skabelon. Eleverne arbejder i grupper med at forfatte en tale for eller imod en given revolution. Eleverne kan enten vælge en af de to revolutioner, der er arbejdet med i forløbet, en af de selvvalgte revolutioner, som blev fremlagt i det foregående modul eller en anden selvvalgt sag.

Hovedpointen er, at de selv har en motivation for arbejdet, men der skal være et krav om, at konteksten for talen skal fremgå klart (tid, sted, omstændigheder). Modulet skal sekvenseres skarpt, da der skal være tid til, at eleverne holder deres taler. Eleverne kan holde talen som gruppe eller et enkelt medlem kan tage opgaven på sig (eller pålægges den af læreren, fx ved lodtrækning). Det er også en mulighed, at talen videooptages og afspilles for klassen. De fra gruppen (og resten af klassen) der ikke taler, tildeles andre roller som hujende tilhørere, der skal klappe, rejse sig osv.

Modulet afsluttes med en fælles samtale på klassen om mobilisering: hvordan har de oplevet at tale, og hvordan har de oplevet at blive talt til i et opflammende sprog og måske lade sig rive med?

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: Ud over den pointe at eleverne her kan få samlet op på, hvad dynamikkerne i en revolution kan være, ligger der også en pointe i at lade eleverne træde ind i rollen som bevidst samfundsforandrende eller samfundsbevarende subjekter. Selvom der vil være et klart element af teater over afholdelsen af talerne, kan aktiviteterne godt anspore til samtaler om elevernes egen rolle i hvad og hvem, der driver samfundsforandringer, og hvorfor, herunder elevernes oplevelse af mobilisering.

Modul 8: Opsamling og afslutning

Problemstilling: Hvad har vi fået ud af revolutionsforløbet og hvad kan vi spørge om nu?

Materiale: En eller flere debatterende artikler, der omhandler hhv. den amerikanske og russiske revolution og trækker tråde og perspektiver til i dag , fx: Arven fra den amerikanske revolution, Information 29.okt 2016 og Den russiske revolution var et moderniseringsprojekt båret frem af religiøst håb, Information 21. aug. 2017

Aktiviteter og arbejdsformer: Eleverne har hjemmefra læst artiklerne, evt. således at halvdelen af klassen har læst den ene og den anden halvdel den anden. Modulet starter med, at eleverne i mindre (matrix)grupper får tid til at drøfte, hvad de har fået ud af artiklerne, og hvordan de kan koble dem til det øvrige forløb.

Alle smågrupper formulerer på den baggrund 2-3 spørgsmål, som de gerne vil drøfte med klassen. Læreren kan lave det benspænd, at ét af spørgsmålene inddrager revolutionsteoretiske aspekter. De skrives enkeltvis på papirstykker, der samles ind i en skål. Herefter organiseres en dialogcirkel, hvor elevernes egne spørgsmål løbende trækkes fra skålen og gøres til genstand for samtale. Det er afgørende, at samtalen ikke (alene) samler op på faktuel viden, men særligt på undren, refleksion osv.

Som afslutning sættes eleverne til at formulere en eller flere problemstillinger, som forløbet har givet svar på efter opskriften: Hvis forløbet var svarene, hvad var så problemstillingerne? Dette kan foregå i grupper eller som individuel skrivning. Læreren (eller eleverne) kan efterfølgende samle problemstillingerne som et fælles afslutningsdokument, eleverne kan bruge til eksamenslæsning.

Supplerende didaktiske overvejelser: I klassesamtalen kan læreren sikre, at de revolutionsteoretiske aspekter undervejs bringes i spil uden at det bliver en ny gennemgang, men således at det ordforråd, der anvendes i samtalen, rummer nogle af begreberne herfra.

Hvis klassen er helt uvant med dialogcirklen, kan drøftelserne godt organiseres i mindre grupper, hvor læreren løbende læser de formulerede spørgsmål op, og grupperne på den måde hele tiden tvinges til at forholde sig til nye perspektiver. Ønskes en mere summativt evaluerende afslutning, kan eleverne sættes til at besvare en enkelt af de indsamlede problemstillinger, evt. med inddragelse af materiale fra forløbet altså ikke vha. nyt materiale.

Besvarelserne kan afleveres som lydfiler eller som korte skriftlige besvarelser, evt. skrevet på tid de sidste 5 min af modulet.

Kreditering

Karen Steller Bjerregaard, Hvidovre Gymnasium og HF, i samarbejde med CFU.

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Revolutioner, der forandrede verden - STX | emu danmarks læringsportal

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Forløbet undersøger konkret den amerikanske og den russiske revolution, deres årsager og konsekvenser, samt hvordan man kan forklare historiske forandringer og brud. Et underliggende spørgsmål er således også, hvordan eleverne kan se sig selv som historiske aktører, der kan skabe forandring.

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Her følger en gennemgang af begivenhederne:

Oktober 2014:

16. oktober mødes Ruslands præsident Putin og Ukraines præsident Porosjenko i Milano i forbindelse med det Europæisk-Asiatiske ASEM.

Samtidig fortsætter våbenhvilen med at være skrøbelig, da separatister og regeringens styrker gentagne gange støder sammen i udkanten af Donetsk.

Det ventes, at de EU -venlige partier får flest stemmer ved parlamentsvalget . Nuværende præsident Petro Porosjenkos politiske blok er spået til at blive den dominerende magt i parlamentet , hvor prorusserne til gengæld får mindre indflydelse .

36,514,491 er registrerede vælgere i Ukraine. Men omkring 13 procent af vælgerne har ikke mulighed for at stemme på grund af konflikten med Rusland.

September 2014:

August 2014:

Juli 2014:

Juni 2014:

4. juni: Den erfarne danske OSCE-observatør tilbageholdes på 10. dag i Ukraine, og der er fortsat ingen tegn på løsladelse, lyder det i en pressemeddelse fra OSCE.

Den russiske præsident, Putin, siger, at det var alt for farligt at overlade Krims skæbne til politikerne i Kijev.

Maj 2014

En erfaren dansk observatør er blandt de savnede.

28. maj: Endnu et hold OSCE-observatører forsvinder i Donetsk i Ukraine. To dage før er et hold på fire - heriblandt en dansker - blevet tilbageholdt.

OSCE mister kontakten til et hold på fire internationale observatører fra Danmark, Tyrkiet, Estland og Schweiz.

25. maj: Det ukrainske præsidentvalg giver en sikker sejr til favoritten Petro Porosjenko, som også er kendt som Chokoladekongen. Han erklærer sig selv som vinder af valget.

Han lægger hurtigt op til en hård linje over for separatisterne i det østlige Ukraine.

6. maj: Ukrainsk militær træder i karakter og angriber prorussiske oprørere i byen Slavjansk. Over 30 prorussere mister livet i kampenen.

2. maj: Situationen i Østukraine eskalerer, da to ukrainske helikoptere bliver skudt ned af prorussiske luftværnsraketter, og begge piloter dræbes.

Putin svarer, at nøglen til en løsning er, at de ukrainske styrker i den østlige del af landet trækkes væk, at volden ophører, og at der indledes en national dialog.

April 2014

30. april: Den internationale valutafond IMF giver Ukraine en hjælpende hånd på 17 milliarder dollars over de næste to år.

Den danske OSCE-observatør, John Christensen, fortæller, at han efter omstændighederne har det godt.

25. april: En dansker og 12 andre i en OSCE-gruppe bliver taget som gidsler i det østlige Ukraine og beskyldes for spionage.

22. april: Ukraines fungerende præsident, Oleksander Turtjinov, giver ordre til at genstarte en såkaldt anti-terroroperation i det østlige Ukraine, efter at to mænd, heriblandt en lokalpolitiker fra præsidentens eget parti, bliver fundet "tortureret til døde" i Donetsk-regionen.

7. april: Demonstranter besætter regeringsbygninger i de østukrainske byer Donetsk, Luhansk og Kharkiv og kalder på en uafhængighedserklæring. Dagen efter generobrer de ukrainske myndigheder kontrollen med Kharkiv-bygningen.

Marts 2014

31. marts: Vladimir Putin beordrer en "delvis tilbagetrækkelse" af russiske tropper fra områder nær grænsen til Ukraine.

17. marts: EU og USA indfører sanktioner mod flere russiske embedsmænd efter en folkeafstemning på Krim-halvøen, hvor 97 procent af vælgerne støttede at gå under russisk flag. Sanktionerne indebærer blandt andet indrejseforbud i EU .

3. marts: For at straffe russernes fremfærd aflyser verdens førende industrinationer, heriblandt USA, Tyskland og Storbritannien, alle aktiviteter frem mod G8-topmødet i juni, som Rusland skulle være vært ved.

USA offentliggør også, at man vil støtte Ukraine økonomisk. Observatører taler om den største krise mellem Vesten og Rusland siden afslutningen på Den Kolde Krig.

Februar 2014

26. februar: En af de politistyrker, som har deltaget i de hårdeste kampe på Uafhængighedspladsen i Kijev, er specialenheden Berkut. Den nedlægges, da den fra flere sider anklages for at være skyld i flere demonstranters død.

Det næste tegn på russisk utilfredshed med situationen i Ukraine bliver, at Ruslands præsident Putin beordrer sine styrker nær grænsen til Ukraine til at gennemføre en stor militærøvelse. Og formanden for det russiske overhus kalder Janukovitj for Ukraines legitime præsident.

24. februar: Ukraines nye indenrigsminister, Arsen Avakov, oplyser, at den afsatte præsident Viktor Janukovitj nu er efterlyst for massedrab på grund af sin rolle i urolighederne.

Rusland skærper retorikken og gør sin holdning til den nye ukrainske regering klar, da den russiske premierminister kalder den for illegitim.

18. februar: Kampklædt politi stormer protestlejre på Uafhængighedspladsen i Kijev, hvor demonstranter kaster molotovcocktails, skyder med fyrværkeri og kaster sten mod politiet.

Januar 2014

22. januar: Anti-demonstrationsloven virker mod hensigten, situationen tilspidses, og Ukraines hovedstad Kijev bliver præget af voldsomme sammenstød mellem demonstranter og politi. De første demonstranter dør.

December 2013

Kort før jul indgår Ukraines præsident Janukovitj en række aftaler med Rusland, der knytter de to lande tættere sammen.

November 2013

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OVERBLIK Sådan blev en revolution til verdenskrise i Ukraine

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Her følger en gennemgang af begivenhederne: Oktober 2014: 16. oktober mødes Ruslands præsident Putin og Ukraines præsident Porosjenko i Milano i forbindelse med det Europæisk-Asiatiske ASEM. Samtidig fortsætter våbenhvilen med at være skrøbelig, da separatister og regeringens styrker gentagne gange støder sammen i udkanten af Donetsk.

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From Blurring Imperfections to Falsifying Reality: How Stalin Made the Truth Disappear Through ‘Photoshop’ | HistoryNet

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"The history of a revolution is for us first of all the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of their own destiny.... The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the approval of the masses. The fundamental political process thus consists in the gradual comprehension by a class of the problems arising from the social crisis-the active orientation of the masses by a method of successive approximations."-Introduction to Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution.

Revolutions, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote, "must not by any means be regarded as a single act...but as a series of more or less powerful outbreaks rapidly alternating with periods of more or less intense calm." To understand and navigate this process, revolutionaries must understand both the objective possibility of working-class rule, and the specific opportunities and challenges at every given moment. Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution chronicles the revolutionary process of 1917, the challenges for the young working class, its "successive approximations," as it forged a course through first overthrowing the ancient rotten monarchy of the tsar in February, then casting off the newborn, rotten bourgeois democracy of the Provisional Government in October.

Dozens of histories of the Russian Revolution have been written; what makes Trotsky's History unique is its uncompromisingly working-class, Marxist account of the totality of the process, made all the more tangible from the point of view of a participant.

Trotsky's personal involvement in no way inhibits his scientific view. Historian and Trotsky biographer Isaac Deutscher writes,

as in the best military thinking, extreme partisanship and scrupulously sober observation indeed go hand in hand. To the good soldier nothing is of greater importance than to get a realistic picture of the 'other side of the hill,' unclouded by wishful thinking or emotion. Trotsky, the commander of the October insurrection, had acted on this principle; and Trotsky the historian does the same. He achieves in his image of the revolution the unity of the subjective and objective elements. ¹

Trotsky scorned historians who sought to "stand on the wall" observing both sides dispassionately; he believed such an "objective" view inevitably threw support to the reactionary forces.

Beyond the analytical incisiveness of the History, it is a work of great emotion and poetry, and Trotsky's success at communicating the sweep of the revolution is often achieved through the tiniest detail depicting the psychological transformation of the masses. A wink, a hesitation, the trembling but defiant voice of a soldiers' deputy in the Soviet embodied the growing boldness of an oppressed class rising to its feet against its oppressors. Deutscher wrote of this aspect of the History: "He lets us feel that here and now men make their own history; and that they do it in accordance with the 'laws of history,' but also by acts of their consciousness and will. Of such men, even though they may be illiterate and crude, he is proud; and he wants us to be proud of them. The revolution is for him that brief and pregnant moment when the humble and downtrodden have their say." ²

The massive History of the Russian Revolution was written in one year while Trotsky was in exile in Prinkipo, an island off the coast of Turkey. His exile followed years of battling the rising Stalinist bureaucracy inside Russia, culminating in his expulsion from the Bolshevik Central Committee in 1927, removal to Alma Ata (Kazakhstan) in 1928, and final removal from the USSR in 1929. From being leader of the Red Army and hero of the civil war, Trotsky was vilified as the agent of counterrevolution within the international communist movement. As Stalin sought to destroy any vestige of workers' power within Russia, a campaign of lies and slander against Trotsky paralleled a rewriting of Bolshevik Party history and the inversion of Marxist theories of revolution to suit Russia's foreign policy needs. "Not for a moment did Stalin himself slacken," writes Deutscher, "or allow his propagandists and policemen to relax, in the anti-Trotskyist campaign which he carried into every sphere of thought and activity." ³ Trotsky thus wrote History of the Russian Revolution both to rescue a real history of the Russian Revolution and to defend his own role within it.

The Stalinist image of an infallible party always a step ahead of the class does not withstand an honest appraisal of the revolution. The dynamism and ultimately the success of the Bolshevik Party sprang from the interpenetration of the party and the working class, and the energetic debates within the party. Trotsky brilliantly captures the tension between the formal leadership in the party center and the party's broad layer of cadre leading in the streets and localities. The caricature of a party center issuing orders to an obedient, passive membership bears no resemblance to the real history of 1917, when in initial weeks of the revolution militants and worker cadres outpaced the center. Nor does the myth of the omniscient Central Committee hold; in reality, the party and Lenin were forced to reconsider their fundamental theoretical assumptions about the nature of the revolution because of the logic of the initiatives taken by the working class, including members of their own party.

This is not to say that Trotsky deemphasizes the role of the Bolsheviks or their outstanding leaders. While reasserting his own leading role (he became president of the Petrograd Soviet in August and led the October insurrection), Trotsky, who was not to join the Bolsheviks until July of 1917, gives the greatest responsibility for the success of the Bolsheviks to Lenin. But his is not the Lenin of Stalinist myth. The cogency of Lenin's political insights didn't spring from an otherworldly vision, but from his ability to listen with great sensitivity and look at reality without sentimentality to perceive what was really there.

Stalin does not fare as well in Trotsky's History. Where Stalin is present, he is often arguing against Lenin, and is firmly on the conservative side of most debates. The real history defies both the myth of the unity of Lenin and Stalin, and of a monolithic leadership of the Bolsheviks.
Combined development
Trotsky establishes in the opening chapter of History of the Russian Revolution the unique "combined" character of Russia's economic development, with one foot in the agrarian past and one in the industrial present. The world's largest and most advanced factories existed within a sea of peasants laboring on the land with techniques unchanged for centuries. Trotsky writes:

A backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries.... Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness-and such a privilege exists-permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages.

Forced to defend itself from, and compete with, neighboring capitalist powers, Russia absorbed the most modern technology and industries-but it did this by grafting the most modern capitalist methods, with the aid of state aid and foreign investment, on top of the most backward rural social relations, and without overthrowing the preexisting political and social order dominated by the monarchy and landlords.

Unfortunately for the rulers of Russia, they also imported the class struggle that is an essential component of capitalism. The working class leapt from conditions of peasant livelihood directly into the collective urban experience, which included "sharp changes of environment, ties, relations, and a sharp break with the past. It is just this fact-combined with the concentrated oppressions of tsarism-that made the Russian workers hospitable to the boldest conclusions of revolutionary thought-just as the backward industries were hospitable to the last word in capitalist organization." Despite their numerically small proportion-about 10 percent of the population in 1917-the working class held an economic and social position that meant they could lead the peasant majority in overthrowing capitalism in Russia, but could only be successful as part of an international wave of revolts.

Trotsky writes:

The law of combined development of backwards countries-in the sense of a peculiar mixture of backwards elements with the more modern factors-here rises before us in its most finished form, and offers a key to the fundamental riddle of the Russian revolution.... In order to realize the Soviet state, there was required a drawing together and mutual penetration of two factors belonging to completely different historical species: a peasant war-that is, a movement characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development-and a proletarian insurrection, the movement signalizing its decline. That is the essence of 1917.

While the economy straddled two contending modes, the political system was decidedly backward looking. Despite utter dependence on foreign loans and technology, Tsar Nicholas' court refused to embrace modernity: "On the contrary, it withdrew into itself. Its spirit of medievalism thickened under the pressure of hostility and fear, until it acquired the character of a disgusting nightmare overhanging the country."

Trotsky's characterization of the tsar and tsarina are hideously funny, depicting them as cruel, shallow, and utterly detached from the suffering of the millions of their subjects. The so-called leader and master of the Russian Empire had an outlook that "was not broader than that of a minor police official-with this difference, that the latter would have a better knowledge of reality and be less burdened with superstitions." Most damning are the tsar's diaries, which chronicle the most tedious banalities of his daily life while Russia convulses. When the State Duma reopened under the pressure of massive social instability he wrote: "April 14. Took a walk in a thin shirt and took up paddling again. Had tea on the balcony. Stana dined and took a ride with us. Read." Later that summer when the tsar dissolved the Duma he spares only a few words on the crisis: "It has happened! The Duma was closed today. At breakfast after Mass long faces were noticeable among many.... The weather was fine.... Went paddling in a canoe."

In February of 1917, in response to a telegram from the president of the Duma on the collapse of the military, he wrote "Again that fat-bellied Rodzianko has written me a lot of nonsense, which I won't even bother to answer."

Trotsky argues that the apparently personal traits of the tsar-his detachment and blandness-were the personification of the obsolescence of the monarchy. "In reality his ill-luck flowed from the contradictions between those old aims which he inherited from his ancestors and the new historic conditions in which he was placed."

Russia's bourgeoisie, who hated the tsar and longed for his wretched court and its superstitions and rituals to be swept away, were paralyzed by fear of a rebellion from below that a palace coup would unleash. Remembering well the 1905 Revolution, which nearly toppled the tsar, they "could not fail to ask... Will not the palace revolution, instead of a means for preventing a real revolution, turn out to be the last jar that loosens the avalanche? May not the cure prove more ruinous than the disease?"

Both the court and the bourgeoisie were held aloft by collaboration with Western capital. With the onset of World War One, their partnership moved from economic to military. Horribly lagging behind technologically, Russia's sole contribution was cannon fodder: "The one thing the Russian generals did with a flourish was drag human meat out of the country."Fifteen million men were conscripted into the army, and five and a half million of them were killed, captured, or wounded in the three years of war. In the early months of World War One the national rulers were able to defuse the class bitterness that had resurfaced in 1912 after years of repression. But not for long. Trotsky writes, "The war itself, its victims, its horror, its shame, brought not only the old, but also the new layers of workers into conflict with the tsarist regime. It did this with a new incisiveness and led them to the conclusion: we can no longer endure it. The conclusion was universal; it welded the masses together and gave them a mighty dynamic force."

The futility of the war was obvious; desertions and disobedience began early as soldiers lacked not only guns but also shoes. The military mobilization consumed enormous resources, including up to 50 percent of food and fuel, which dragged the working population into poverty. The outbreak of war in 1914 had put a quick halt to a mounting surge of working-class protest throughout Russia, giving way to brief but wild displays of patriotism. In 1915 this reversed course: economic strikes resumed, and escalated so rapidly their numbers doubled by 1916.
The overthrow of the tsar
The intolerable situation was building to a head in the winter of 1917, leading to an acknowledgement among radicals that they were on the road to a dramatic explosion. But none saw how short a road it was. What became the first day of the February Revolution didn't appear to anyone to be of any historic importance. In recognition of International Women's Day, ninety thousand of Petrograd's workers (men and women) went on strike on February 23. A procession of women marched on the local Duma (city council) demanding bread, which "was like demanding milk from a he-goat." Among the banners appeared slogans for the overthrow of the tsar and the end to the war, but the day passed peacefully.

The following day the movement expanded to half the city's workers and immediate demands for food were surpassed by political slogans. The tsar's cavalry, the Cossacks, were called out, but the crowd carefully avoided direct confrontation, confident that the mounted guards wouldn't shoot, and they didn't. Outside one of Petrograd's largest factories a confrontation seemed imminent when Cossacks met advancing strikers:

Decisive moment! But the horsemen, cautiously, in a long ribbon, rode through the corridor just made by the officers...the Cossacks, without openly breaking discipline, failed to force the crowd to disperse, but flowed through it in streams.... The officers hastened to separate their patrol from the workers, and, abandoning the idea of dispersing them, lined the Cossacks out across the street as a barrier to prevent the demonstrators from getting to the center. But even this did not help: standing stock-still in perfect discipline, the Cossacks did not hinder the workers from 'diving' under their horses. The revolution does not choose its paths: it made its first steps toward victory under the belly of a Cossack's horse.

The third day the strike continued to deepen, and the army was called out as the Cossacks wavered and the hated police were chased out of the streets. Women again took the lead, approaching the soldiers and "more boldly than the men, take hold of their rifles, beseech, almost command: 'Put down your bayonets-join us.'" Seeing the army begin to buckle as it gathered in the arms of its working-class sisters and brothers, the government struck back before dawn on February 26, arresting more than a hundred activists. In confrontations through the day forty protestors were shot. However, the crowd was not cowed by this offensive: "The masses will no longer retreat, they resist with optimistic brilliance.... The crowd is not only bitter, it is audacious."

Pressure on the soldiers began to break down discipline, first in small groups within units, then suddenly giving way to a flood of mutiny. Unlike the working class, which has the experience of partial struggles against their oppressors, military discipline with its penalty of death gives mutinies an explosive, all-or-nothing character, which cannot be solely instigated by words. Trotsky brilliantly explains:

The more the soldiers in their mass are convinced that the rebels really are rebelling-that this is not a demonstration after which they will have to go back to the barracks and report, that this is a struggle to the death, that the people might win if they join them, and that this winning will not only guarantee impunity, but will alleviate the lot of all-the more they realize this, the more willing they are to turn aside their bayonets, or go over with them to the people. In other words, the revolutionists can create a break in the soldiers' mood only if they themselves are actually ready to seize the victory at any price whatever, even the price of blood. And this highest determination never can, or will, remain unarmed.

The fifth day ended with the collapse of the military's obedience, the tsar's abdication, and a mass march to Tauride Palace, which became the new center of power. But the marchers did not themselves enter Tauride Palace to rule a new Russia-the thousands of leaders who produced the revolution returned to the working-class districts and barracks, leaving the halls of power to be occupied by party heads and professional politicians who positioned themselves on the side of the uprising.

No single party could claim responsibility for the success of the February Revolution, and the lack of an acknowledged platform or visible leadership has lead to the characterization of the revolution as "spontaneous." But Trotsky dissects the movement in the chapter "Who Led the February Revolution?" to illuminate the deeper influences that shaped the insurrection. All the parties were caught unawares; the Bolsheviks initially argued against the Women's Day strikes. In the words of a leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries: "The revolution caught us, the party people of those days, like the foolish virgins of the Bible, napping." Much of the formal leadership of the left, including the Bolsheviks, was abroad, and the underground organizations had been severely damaged, if not totally shattered, in the right-wing surge that accompanied the opening of the war.

This however, was not enough, Trotsky argues, to eradicate the revolutionary traditions and lessons carried by worker militants. Decisive within the working-class vanguard were "workers who had thought over the experience of 1905, criticized the constitutional illusions of the liberals and Mensheviks, assimilated the perspectives of the revolution, mediated hundreds of times about the question of the army, watched attentively what was going on in their midst-workers capable of making revolutionary inferences from what they observed and communicating them to others." (The Mensheviks Trotsky refers to, and to which we will return, were the moderate socialists who allied themselves with the liberals.) Trotsky credits the Bolsheviks for this influence, despite their organizational weaknesses in the beginning of the outbreak, and argues it was the process of struggle that turned those rudimentary ideas into a driving force for revolution. He writes:

To the smug politicians of liberalism and tamed socialism everything that happens among [the?] masses is customarily represented as an instinctive process, no matter whether they are dealing with an anthill or a beehive. In reality the thought which was drilling through the thick of the working class was far bolder, more penetrating, more conscious, than those little ideas by which the educated classes live. Moreover, this thought was more scientific: not only because it was to a considerable degree fertilized with the methods of Marxism, but still more because it was ever nourishing itself on the living experience of the masses which were soon to take their place in the revolutionary arena. Thoughts are scientific if they correspond to an objective process and make it possible to influence that process and guide it.

He concludes: "To the question, who led the February Revolution? We can then answer definitely enough: Conscious and tempered workers educated for the most part by the party of Lenin. But we must here immediately add: This leadership proved sufficient to guarantee the victory of the insurrection, but it was not adequate to transfer immediately into the hands of the proletarian vanguard the leadership of the revolution."
Dual power
The bourgeoisie was deeply frightened by the revolution. Trotsky quotes one commentator saying of the liberals: "Officially they celebrated, eulogized the revolution, cried 'Hurrah!' to the fighters for freedom, decorated themselves with red ribbons and marched under red banners.... But in their souls, their conversations tête-à-tête, they were horrified, they shuddered, they felt themselves captives in the hands of hostile elements traveling an unknown road."

At first the bourgeois politicians of the Duma dismissed the massive outpouring of bitterness in the streets, hoping the tsar would smash it. When it advanced and broke the back of tsarism, they were paralyzed, and simply awaited arrest in the Tauride Palace, quivering and wringing their hands. However, when a mass of soldiers and workers approached Tauride Palace, it was not to arrest the Duma, but to demand it assume power. Ironically, the deputy who delivered the message that the Duma must plant itself at the head of a movement it feared and hated was Alexander Kerensky, a moderate socialist deputy who came to have enormous influence in the coming months, attempting to deliver the movement into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hearing this news, the Liberal Duma representatives hastily formed a Provisional Committee, as if cobbling together a raft to ride out the breaking wave of revolution.

At the same hour, and in the same building as the founding of the Provisional Committee, the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies was convened. Drawing on the experience of the 1905 Revolution, two Menshevik politicians formed the Executive Committee and called for all workplaces to send delegates to form a new Soviet. Originally formed in the mass strike movement of 1905, the soviets (Russian for "council") began as committees for organizing strike activity, but grew as the conflict developed into organs for self-governance and centers for armed struggle against tsarism. However, the motivation of the Mensheviks was not to deepen the initiative of the rebellious working class, but to bring the movement to heel under the establishment of a bourgeois democracy. Trotsky describes them as socialists who "had taught the masses that the bourgeoisie is an enemy, but themselves feared more than anything else to release the masses from the control of that enemy." If they were able to outflank the militants and Bolsheviks in calling the soviet into being, they could moderate its demands and trajectory.

However, the aims of the Mensheviks and the reality of the life of the Soviet diverged immediately. The memory of the movement of 1905 blazed bright in the minds of the oppressed, and they rushed to build local soviets. At the first mass meeting soldiers sent their representatives, who were

shell-shocked as it were by the insurrection, and still hardly in control of their tongues. But they were just the ones who found the words which no orator could find. That was one of the most moving scenes of the revolution, now first feeling its power, feeling the unnumbered masses it has aroused, the colossal tasks, the pride in success, the joyful failing of the heart at the thought of the morrow which is to be still more beautiful than today.

The soviet was embraced by the representatives of the soldiers and became the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies to formalize the alliance between the factories and the barracks that had been born in the insurrection against the tsar.

The soviet immediately set about to address the most pressing issues of the country's population: food and money. A Food Commission formed, a decision was made to occupy the state bank, the mint, and the treasury. The telegraph, telephone, and rail systems all went (voluntarily) into the hands of the soviet. Peasants, and the lower ranks of the middle class, gravitated toward the soviet, as the "masses poured into the soviet as though into the triumphal gates of the revolution. All that remained outside the boundaries seemed to fall away from the revolution, seemed somehow to belong to a different world. And so it was in reality."

The soviet represented the sheer force of the mobilized working class and soldiers in their creativity and scope. It held the loyalty of the armed forces and armed workers, and was seen by them as "our" government. The Provisional Committee, in contrast, was weak and isolated, able to survive only so long as the soviet permitted it; only so long as the soviet was dominated by parties who supplied the bourgeoisie with the necessary lifeline.

Unbeknownst to the thousands of workers and soldiers who sent delegates to the soviet, members of the Soviet Executive Committee approached the Provisional Committee on March 1 and pressed it to take governmental power into its hands.

Trotsky explains:

Even in those very first days of victory, when the new power of the revolution was forming itself with fabulous speed and unconquerable strength, those socialists who stood at the head of the soviet were already looking around with alarm to see if they could find a real "boss." They took it for granted that the power ought to pass to the bourgeoisie. Here the chief political knot of the new regime is tied: one of its threads leads into the chamber of the Executive Committee of workers and soldiers, the other into the central headquarters of the bourgeois parties.

Trotsky continues: "only behind the backs of the workers and soldiers, without their knowledge, and against their actual will, had the socialist leaders been able to expropriate this power for the benefit of the bourgeoisie."

Trotsky characterizes the coexistence of the Provisional Government (so called after March 1) as "dual power"-an unstable balance between two competing centers of class power. Trotsky gives a brilliant analysis of the instability of the competing authorities:

The political mechanism of revolution consists of the transfer of power from one class to another. The forcible overturn is usually accomplished in a brief time. But no historic class lifts itself from a subject position to a position of rulership suddenly in one night, even though a night of revolution.... The historic preparation of a revolution brings about, in the pre-revolutionary period, a situation in which the class which is called to realize the new social system, although not yet master of the country, has actually concentrated in its hands a significant share of the state power, while the official apparatus of the government is still in the hands of the old lords. That is the initial dual power in every revolution.

While the bourgeoisie and their allies in the moderate socialist parties were aware of the threat dual power presented for the establishment of capitalism, the working class and soldiers for the most part did not see the inherent contradiction. They voted in large numbers for parties that sought to undermine the revolutionary potential of the soviet. Thus the initial stage of the revolution was characterized by the most militant, direct action tactics in battle against the tsar-including revolutionary organs of power, the soviets-and the political dominance of parties who opposed workers' power and the key demands of land and peace, and who handed power over to the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky's explanation captures the dynamism of the class struggle, which exists simultaneously in political and economic spheres, in elections and insurrection.

The active and militant minority inevitable puts forward under fire from the enemy its more revolutionary and self-sacrificing elements. It is thus natural in the February fights the worker-Bolsheviks occupied the leading place. But the situation changes the moment the victory is won and its political fortification begins. The elections to the organs and the institutions of the victorious revolution attract and challenge infinitely broader masses than those who battled with arms in their hands.... An overwhelming majority of the workers, Menshevik, Social Revolutionary and non-party, supported the Bolsheviks at the moment of direct grapple with tsarism. But only a small minority of the workers understood that the Bolsheviks were different from other socialist parties.... And since the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries comprised infinitely larger ranks of the intelligentsia-who came pouring in from all sides-and thus got into their hands an immense staff of agitators, the elections, even in shops and factories, gave them an enormous majority.

The parties that dominated the life of the oppressed classes in the months after February believed, in the words of Nikolai Sukhanov, a Menshevik chronicler of the revolution, "The power destined to replace tsarism must be only a bourgeois power...we must steer our course by this principle. Otherwise the uprising will not succeed and the revolution will collapse."

Class collaboration under the auspices of building a new revolutionary state was boldly promoted by Russia's chief "socialist" parties: the Mensheviks, who dominated the urban working class and petty bourgeoisie, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who thought themselves the representatives of Russia's peasants. The common language of Russia's left was colored by Marxism, "not so much a criticism of capitalist society as an argument for the inevitability of the bourgeois development of the country." Therefore, the majority "Marxists" ("Compromisers" in Trotsky's lexicon) saw their role as facilitating the establishment of bourgeois democracy, from which, at some much later date, a real movement for socialism could emerge. They thought any attempt to pursue an independent working-class path, or to dare to speak of socialism in the near term would doom the revolution.

The Compromisers made it possible for the bourgeoisie to assume power after February, and their position within the Soviet Executive Committee allowed them to hold it. They used their leadership position to limit the scope of the lower classes' incursions into bourgeois power: they could be found resisting the eight-hour workday, standing against the seizure of land by peasants, attempting to curb workplace democracy, and providing political cover for the war. In electing the parties of compromise, the suffering classes had identified them as "opponents of the tsar, the capitalists, and the landowners. But in voting for them they created a partition wall between themselves and their own aims. They could not now move forward at all without bumping into this wall erected by themselves, and knocking it over."
The Provisional Government
The victorious movement dashed the hopes of the Liberal bourgeois parties to negotiate an easy transfer of power from the old tsar to a new tsar; instead they found themselves forced into governing by an insurrection they had feared all along.

The Provisional Government was dominated by the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). The new ministry included the nephew of the tsar, Prince Lvov, as prime minister, (who Trotsky characterizes as having "a strong dislike for excitement") and some of Russia's richest industrialists and landlords. The minister of finance, Tereshchenko, "was an owner of sugar factories, estates, forests, and other innumerable properties, worth some eighty million rubles in gold, president of the Military-Industrial Committee of Kiev, possessed of a good French pronunciation, and on top of it all a connoisseur of the ballet." The one "socialist" minister allowed in this coterie of bosses and war profiteers was the Social Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, whose radical understanding of the new regime was summed up when he said: "The policies of a revolutionary government ought never to offend anybody unnecessarily."

Too weak and cowardly to rule on their own behalf, the Liberals had hidden behind the tsar's truncheon. They now wrapped themselves in the red flag handed to them by the Compromisers. They had every intention of continuing the war and annexing anything they could get their hands on-but they needed to reinvent the rationale for the slaughter. The slogan that united the bourgeoisie with the revolutionary masses was "defense": defense of revolutionary Russia, defense of the revolution. With the cover provided by the moderate socialist parties, an offensive war for empire was transformed into revolutionary self-defense. This slogan successfully dragged even some of the most dyed-in-the-wool revolutionaries behind it, including some leading Bolsheviks.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks agreed with the Menshevik assessment that the overthrow of the tsar would be a bourgeois-democratic, not socialist, revolution. But the Bolsheviks had a fundamentally opposite view of the role of the working class and of the liberal bourgeoisie. They saw the Russian workers as the natural leader of a revolutionary movement and the liberals as counterrevolutionary. They also viewed the peasants, whose historic struggle for land could break out into mighty flashes of struggle against the landlords and agricultural capitalists, as the workers' natural ally against the tsar. The Mensheviks held that the most important alliance in the overthrow of the tsar was the liberal bourgeoisie, and that therefore the demands of the lower classes be curtailed to not frighten off these allies. While many things changed over the months of revolution, these parties stayed true to their chosen allies: the Mensheviks clung at any cost to their liberal bourgeois allies, and the Bolsheviks drew closer to the peasantry through revolutionary action.

The same way society was polarized by the competing interests of the bourgeois and working-class elements, the Bolshevik Party was pulling in opposite directions. At the level of the shop floor, the worker-cadre fought Menshevism, but in the Tauride Palace, the party center was pulled toward the petty bourgeois slogan of "defense," and critical support of the Provisional Government. Meanwhile, in the working-class heartland of St. Petersburg, the Vyborg district, cadres of the Bolshevik Party raised demands of "All Power to the Soviets" against the Mensheviks and their own leaders. Local sections passed resolutions criticizing the vacillation within their own party.

The wavering of the party center in the first days after the revolution was steadied by the return of firm hands to the helm of Pravda. Unfortunately they were the hands of Stalin and Kamenev, and they were firmly conservative. Trotsky spares no details in chronicling the defensist, compromising nature of Stalin's leadership during March, attempting to crack the facade manufactured by the Stalinist bureaucracy of the infallible party and unity of Lenin and Stalin. Stalin forcefully articulated the preexisting party line that the revolution must be bourgeois. In Pravda, the "defensist" line was fiercely voiced: "Our slogan is not the meaningless 'down with war.' Our slogan is pressure upon the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it...to make and attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations...and until then every man remains at his fighting post!"The party center even began to gravitate toward the idea of reuniting with the Mensheviks in a single party. ⁴

Into this morass of confusion Lenin reappeared from exile, riding a "sealed train" through Germany from Finland. Passing through Germany left Lenin and the Bolsheviks open to the Compromisers' vitriol that they were "German agents," but the crisis in the party and fear a revolutionary moment might be wasted outweighed this threat. Lenin had grown alarmed at the direction of the party center, and had written a number of letters ("Letters from Afar") berating the comrades for their vacillation toward the Provisional Government, even threatening to split. ⁵

Upon his return (literally when he stepped off the train at Finland Station), he set forth a shocking new analysis of the situation: the overthrow of the tsar was just the opening round of a deeper, international, socialist revolution that could start in Russia. He argued the situation of dual power was not an "advantageous" arrangement as Stalin had put it in Pravda, it was an unstable balance that could only end in the smashing of the soviets or the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks needed to prepare for an overthrow of the Provisional Government in favor of "All Power to the Soviets," to open the era of international revolution.

Lenin's new formulation came like a thunderclap in a chapel. His comrades of years were shocked, calling him an anarchist, and declaring he had been away too long. He was not only arguing for a change of practical tactics, but a complete renovation of one of the core pillars of Bolshevik theory. He adopted Trotsky's formulation from 1906 of permanent revolution-that the working class was compelled to lead the bourgeois revolution because of the vacuum left by the decayed bourgeoisie, but in doing so had begun to construct an alternative social order opposed to bourgeois rule. With a self-conscious leadership, the class could move forward to begin constructing a socialist order, based on the spread of revolution to more advanced countries like Germany.

Members of the Bolshevik center argued against this new theory, arguing the democratic revolution had not been completed, and therefore could not move on to a socialist stage. They were also influenced by fear of cutting themselves off from the many workers who still identified with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. Lenin argued,

We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves on the consciousness of the masses. Even if it is necessary to remain in a minority-so be it.... All we can do is to explain patiently, insistently, systematically the error of their tactics. So long as we are in the minority we will carry on this work of criticism, in order to free the masses from deceit. We do not want the masses to believe us just on our say-so.... We want the masses to be freed by experience by their mistakes.... The oppressed will come to us because the war will bring them to us.

Lenin's ability to win the party over was not based on his oratorical skills or dictatorial command of the membership. In the words of his comrade Ludmilla Stahl, in embracing the struggle for socialism "we are now doing what life itself suggests to us." Lenin was not pulling theories out of the air; he made an objective assessment of the situation that included a working class whose self-activity had created a situation of dual power. And in turn the level of self-activity and its direction was shaped by the presence of thousands of worker-cadres of the Bolsheviks. As a leading Bolshevik, Olminsky, said "We (at least many of us) were unconsciously steering a course toward proletarian revolution, although thinking we were steering a course toward a bourgeois-democratic revolution. In other words, we were preparing the October Revolution while thinking we were preparing the February."

Trotsky explains the battle against the Menshevik's class collaboration was already in full swing in the streets and factories:

The worker-Bolsheviks immediately after the revolution took the initiative in the struggle for the eight-hour day; the Mensheviks declared this demand untimely. The Bolsheviks took the lead in arresting the tsarist officials; the Mensheviks opposed 'excesses.' The Bolsheviks energetically undertook the creation of a workers' militia; the Mensheviks delayed the arming of the workers, not wishing to quarrel with the bourgeoisie. Although not yet overstepping the bounds of bourgeois democracy, the Bolsheviks acted, or strove to act-however confused by their leadership-like uncompromising revolutionists.

The Party now shifted to agitating for "All Power to the Soviets" and away from critical support for the Provisional Government. The political lines of demarcation were sharpened between the Compromisers and the Bolsheviks. The April Theses that summarized Lenin's new approach to Russia's revolution retheorized the activity of the party, giving greater confidence and cohesion to its cadres, which would immediately allow the party the flexibility to navigate the crisis that exploded in April.

This episode has received much attention from both fawning Stalinists and right-wing critics who seek to paint Lenin as the iron hand driving the party. Trotsky does argue that Lenin played a decisive role in this and later events of the revolution. The conflict within the party was brewing before Lenin arrived in Russia, but would not have been resolved in a decisive enough manner to take advantage of the moment.

Without Lenin the crisis, which the opportunist leadership was inevitably bound to produce, would have assumed an extraordinarily sharp and protracted character. The conditions of war and revolution, however, would not allow the party a long period for fulfilling its mission. Thus it is by no means excluded that a disoriented and split party might have let slip the revolutionary opportunity for many years. The role of personality arises before us here on a truly gigantic scale. It is necessary only to understand that role correctly, taking personality as a link in the historic chain.

Lenin did tip the balance, and was uniquely positioned to do so given the years of common work he shared with the cadre of the party; but had the party not been in such a state of balance, his efforts would not have yielded such dramatic results. It is also worth pointing out that much of the cadre who had been working in a "conservative" vein within the old framework was eager to implement the new perspective. Lenin did not throw aside the old cadres-they were by and large moved by the pressure from below and sharp debate within the party.

At the end of March, the Cadet minister of foreign affairs, Pavel Miliukov, publicized the Provisional Government's aims of "liberating" Constantinople, Armenia, northern Persia, and parts of Turkey and Austria. The Liberals were attempting to continue a war of aggression under the flag of "defending" revolutionary Russia-they even went so far as to claim to be spreading progress and defending national liberation by invading. When the soviet attempted to force Miliukov to renounce all annexations, he declared to international journalists, "The universal desire to carry the world war through to a decisive victory has only been strengthened" by the revolution. Miliukov's candid exposure of Russia's ambitions inspired an immediate and red-hot response. The following day 25,000-30,000 armed soldiers and workers registered their disagreement. A burst of strikes emptied the factories in support of the armed demonstrators. The minimum demand: remove Miliukov. The sharpness of the reply is explained by the mood of betrayal: "It had been assumed that, up above, everything was being done to bring peace. The Bolsheviks, to be sure, were asserting that the government wanted the war prolonged for the sake of robberies. But could that be possible?" Miliukov was sent packing on May 2, and under pressure of the armed masses the soviet assumed more power as compared to the Provisional Government.

The April demonstrations were the first outbreak of resistance that targeted the workers and soldier's "own" leaders. When faced with the question of becoming the sole revolutionary government, the mighty leaders of the soviet replied "We? But our hands tremble." The masses, having not yet fully embraced the notion of overthrowing the Provisional Government in favor of soviet power, attempted to use "their" leaders to hold the Liberals' feet to the fire.

But in the workers' districts, a molecular change was occurring:

Workers came to the party committees asking how to transfer their names from the Menshevik Party to the Bolshevik. At the factories they began insistently to question deputies about foreign policy, the war, the two-power system, the food question; and as a result of these examinations Menshevik and SR delegates were more and more frequently replaced by Bolsheviks...Sukhanov estimates that at the beginning of May the Bolsheviks had behind them a third of the Petrograd proletariat. Not less, certainly-and the most active third besides. The March formlessness had disappeared; political lines were sharpening; the "fantastic" theses of Lenin were taking flesh in the Petrograd workers' districts.

The Provisional Government found itself caught in a conundrum; with every step toward consolidation or pursuing its own interest, it unleashed the fury of the working class, peasantry, and soldiers, but if it sat idly, the encroachment by the oppressed classes on its power would continue unchecked. Trotsky describes its paralysis: "Up to the days of October in the hard moments it was always undergoing a crisis, and in the intervals between crises it was merely existing." The Liberals drew the Compromisers into a new Cabinet; at first hesitant, the Compromisers were forced by the mood of their base. As one delegate to a congress of soviets later explained the frustration in the army: "We thought that the groan which arose from the army when it learned that the socialists would not enter the ministry to work with people whom they did not trust, while the whole army was compelled to go on dying with people whom it did not trust, must have been heard in Petrograd." Many of the oppressed still believed that their leadership, if they assumed more power within the given system, and if they felt the pressure of the masses, could change course and deliver land, bread, peace, and workers' control.

The Coalition Government, formed in May, immediately came under pressure from its allies in the Entente to initiate an offensive on the Eastern front. America, the new entrant to the carnage, offered $75,000,000 in credit to the Provisional Government if they would undertake a new offensive. The Soviet Executive Committee, which wholly supported the offensive, feared this position would cement their isolation from the masses. They therefore brought the issue before the full Congress of Soviets, then meeting in Petrograd, which approved it.

Kerensky, now minister of war, with corrupt brilliance summarized the hypocrisy of the petty bourgeois conception of a "defensive" offensive: "You will carry on the points of your bayonets-peace." From every political side came projections of failure; the offensive clearly was meant to satisfy the Allies and disorganize the left, especially to weaken the fraternization between the Russian and "enemy" troops. But the offensive backfired and became the final blow against military discipline:

A century of taunts and violence had burst to the surface like a volcano. The soldiers felt themselves again deceived. The offensive had not lead to peace but war. The soldiers did not want war. And they were right.... They were guided by a true national instinct, refracted through the consciousness of men oppressed, deceived, tortured, raised up by revolutionary hope and again thrown back in to the bloody mash. The soldiers were right. A prolongation of the war could give the Russian people nothing but new victims, humiliations, disasters-nothing but an increase of domestic and foreign slavery.

The soldiers turned more decisively to the left, as more proof piled up that the new regime was no different from the old. With the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries formally working in unity with the Liberals, "every soldier that expressed a little more boldly than the rest what they all were feeling was so persistently shouted at from above as a Bolshevik, that he was obliged in the long run to believe it."

As the politicization of the armed forces progressed, the possibility of victory shrank: "When enlightened pacifists try to abolish war by rationalistic arguments they are merely ridiculous, but when the armed masses themselves bring weapons of reason into action against a war, that means the war is about over."

While the army was seething and tearing itself apart at the front, Petrograd became the scene of a different type of confrontation as the competing parties measured the depth of their loyalty among the masses. The first Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd beginning June 3; 1,088 delegates representing 20,000,000 workers, soldiers, and peasants attended. The political character of the soviet lagged behind the real mood of the people-dominated by "people who had registered as socialists in March but got tired of the revolution by June."

Much to the delegates' chagrin, the Bolshevik Military Organization called for a demonstration on June 10 in response to a brewing confrontation over the seizure by anarchists of a bureaucrat's summer home for a workers' school. The Bolsheviks' plan was to march to the halls where the soviet was meeting, to keep fresh in their mind who they were meant to be representing under the banners of "All Power to the Soviets" and "Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists." Giving an indication of the growing hegemony of the Bolsheviks within the most militant section of the working class, the Central Council of Factory and Shop Councils decided to organize for the demonstration.

The Compromise leadership of the Executive Committee swiftly attempted to bully the Bolsheviks out of their plans. The Menshevik paper of June 10 declared, "It is time to brand the Leninists as traitors and betrayers of the revolution."

After whipping up a sizable hysteria over the prospect of a Bolshevik coup, the soviet banned all demonstrations in Petrograd for three days. Fearing to lead the workers prematurely into a confrontation with the Compromisers, the Bolsheviks sent representatives to the factories and barracks to call off the action. Almost simultaneously, delegates from the soviet undertook the same project to tell potential protestors to stay away from the Bolshevik demonstration, but were surprised to find themselves unwelcome: "They had assumed the authority of the congress was inviolable, but had run into a stone wall of distrust and hostility.... One after another the delegates reported how, although they had called off the battle, they were defeated."

Within the soviet, the Compromisers grew furious over the affront to their power. Menshevik Minister of the Interior Irakli Tseretelli demanded the disarming of the Bolsheviks, which was a thorny problem because they had no stores of arms, but the loyalty of sections of the army and armed workers. Trotsky describes the logic of Tseretelli's demand:

To carry the Compromise policy through to a successful end-that is, to the establishment of a parliamentary rule of the bourgeoisie-demanded the disarming of the workers and soldiers. But Tseretelli was not only right. He was besides that powerless. Neither the soldiers nor the workers would have voluntarily given up their arms. It would have been necessary to employ force against them. But Tseretelli was already without forces.

Not wanting to advertise their shift to the right, the Mensheviks argued the soviet should call a demonstration, to rally the masses behind its own banner and pull them away from the Bolsheviks. The slogans made the most timid of demands, although in reality the Compromisers had no intention of fulfilling them: "Universal Peace," "Immediate Convocation of a Constituent Assembly," "Democratic Republic." Tseretelli arrogantly called out the Bolsheviks in the soviet: "Now we shall have an open and honest review of the revolutionary forces.... Now we shall see whom the majority is following, you or us."

Few political characters have gotten their comeuppance so fully and so quickly. Trotsky describes the scene as the soviet delegates viewed the march:

The first Bolshevik slogans were met half-laughingly-Tseretelli had so confidently thrown down his challenge the day before. But these same slogans were repeated again and again. 'Down with the Ten Minister Capitalists!' 'Down with the Offensive' 'All Power to the Soviets!' The ironical smiles froze, and then gradually disappeared. Bolshevik banners floated everywhere. The delegates stopped counting the uncomfortable totals. The triumph of the Bolsheviks was too obvious.

The victory of the Bolsheviks was all the more biting because it "was won on the arena and with the weapons chosen by the enemy." The most militant workers, regardless of formal party affiliation, were flocking to the Bolshevik slogans and pulling further away from the Compromisers' influence.

The spring of 1917 was an intractable tangle of interrelated crises for the oppressed classes: the war, the land question, hunger, rising prices, and fuel shortages. The illusions that the Compromisers would deliver on the promises of February unwound in the weeks and months leading into the summer. The June demonstration revealed how thin the thread connecting the masses to their nominal leaders had become.

The pressure of both the military offensive at the front and a bosses' offensive of lockouts in the cities fueled continuous activity in response. The Bolsheviks won over the leadership of their peers most rapidly at the point of direct confrontation-the shop committees in the factories were solidly Bolshevik months before the party dominated the soviet. The vanguard of the class had drawn the conclusion that "individual economic strikes in the conditions of war, breakdown, and inflation could not bring a serious improvement, that there must be some change in the very foundation. The lockout not only made the workers favorable to the demand for the control of industry, but even pushed them toward the thought of the necessity of taking the factories into the hands of the state."

The demand "All Power to the Soviets" rang out in demonstrations, newspapers, shop committees, soldiers' committees, and land committees. By June the Bolsheviks were the largest party in the Moscow Soviet. The June demonstration was a test of the contending forces in Russia, but a peaceful one. The coming tests of strength would become more violent, and the last illusions of the oppressed in the road of Compromise would be painfully chiseled away by hard experience.

In the chapter "Shifts in the Masses" Trotsky assesses the course of 1917:

A revolution teaches and teaches fast. In that lies its strength. Every week brings something new to the masses. Every two months creates an epoch. At the end of February, the insurrection. At the end of April, a demonstration of the armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd. At the beginning of July, a new assault, far broader in scope and under more resolution slogans. At the end of August, Kornilov's attempt at an overthrow beaten off by the masses. At the end of October, conquest of power by the Bolsheviks. Under these events, so striking in their rhythm, molecular processes were taking place, welding together the heterogeneous parts of the working class into one political whole."

The last four months of this "molecular process" will be the subject of the second half of this article.

1. Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast: 1929-1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 219.

2. Ibid., 233.

3. Ibid., 125.

4. The Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority) were the product of a split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903. They remained two factions of the same party, more or less united at different periods, until they formally split into two separate parties in 1912.

5. Lenin railed against the collapse of the leadership: "Our party will disgrace itself forever, commit political suicide, if it tolerated [taking up defensism]...I personally will not hesitate for a second to declare, and to declare in print, that I shall prefer even an immediate split with anyone in our party, whoever it may be, to making concessions to the social-patriotism of Kerensky and Co." V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 11 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960), 309-310.

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Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (part 1)

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"The history of a revolution is for us first of all the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of their own destiny.... The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they ­cannot endure the old regime.

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Nutidig diskussion om Lenin-billedet uden Trotsky

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Nutidig diskussion om Lenin-billedet uden Trotsky

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Che ingiustizia, però! Trotskij, censurato ancora adesso, oltre cento anni dopo il tempo del suo Regno, cui seguirà la Caduta, l'Esilio e infine l'assassinio, per attenta mano di un agente segreto dell'Nkvd, la polizia staliniana, lo spagnolo Ramón Mercader, prozio per parte materna di Christian De Sica, bizzarrie della storia e del parentado.

Il Partito comunista di Marco Rizzo, idolo femminile, ospite (quasi) fisso de La7, bell'uomo di mondo, figura charmant, nonostante diriga un'organizzazione politica che non teme di rivendicare la "grandezza" e la "gloria" di Stalin, facendo caso al calendario delle ricorrenze dell'album rosso di famiglia, commemora Lenin e le sue "Tesi di aprile", lanciate il 20 di quel mese del 1917 (il 7 aprile secondo il calendario giuliano) sulla Pravda con un articolo. Lenin riteneva che in Russia fosse giunta l'ora di abbattere la rivoluzione borghese iniziata in febbraio per giungere alla rivoluzione socialista.

Caposaldo tattico-strategico di ciò che saranno poi le giornate d'Ottobre, la rivoluzione, o forse il colpo di Stato dei bolscevichi, che farà cessare il governo provvisorio dell'avvocato Aleksandr Kerenskij, forse l'unico spiraglio di democrazia che la Russia abbia mai potuto respirare in tutta la sua storia.

Quest'ultimo, socialista rivoluzionario, morirà nel 1970 a New York, la Cjiesa ortodossa degli Usa rifiuterà di accoglierne le ceneri nei propri cimiteri, ritenendolo il politico maggiormente responsabile della vittoria dei bolscevichi; anche la Chiesa ortodossa serba non gli concesse una tomba, alla fine Kerenskij fu seppellito a Londra.

Ma ecco che sulla pagina Facebook del partito prêt-à-porter di Marco Rizzo, viene pubblicata la foto celebre che mostra Lenin che dalla tribuna protende quasi ad arco il proprio busto verso la massa di operai, contadini e soldati che già plaudono al suo grido-programma: "Tutto il potere ai soviet!". Inciso: la stessa figurina di Vladimir Ilic verrà ritagliata dal costruttivista El Lissitsky per un ulteriore omaggio artistico, immaginando una tribuna futuristica composta da un ponteggio d'acciaio.

Andando ora oltre ogni riflessione culturale e le citazioni storiche, ecco che gli occhiuti grafici e agit-prop del partito di Rizzo si accorgono, forse tardivamente, che sul predellino del podio c'è modo di scorgere proprio Lev Trotskij, il fondatore dell'Armata Rossa, ma anche l'agente del "social-fascismo e dell'imperialismo" così secondo le accuse piovutegli a cominciare dal 1927, con Lenin già morto da tre anni e Stalin al potere, e provvedono immediatamente a cancellarne la sagoma. Se non si trattasse di un, come dire, imbarazzante remake di una cancellazione già avvenuta in epoca proprio staliniana ci sarebbe da indignarsi, invece alla fine ciò che rimane è un ottimo irresistibile senso di pena che volge al ridicolo.

Qualcuno, come c'è modo di leggere tra i commenti che prontamente giungono sulla pagina del social, accanto ai "Viva Lenin", e "Onore alla Rivoluzione d'Ottobre!!!", fa però notare che, proprio al tempo di Stalin sapevano rimuovere assai meglio le figure dalle foto, sebbene i mezzi grafici fossero assai ridotti, si lavorasse di forbici, matita e china, mentre l'applicazione di grafica semplice, fornita assieme a tutte le versioni di Windows, Paint, "è totale, ma ha i suoi limiti".

Intanto ci viene illustrato che "Le Tesi di Aprile contengono lezioni lucidissime per i comunisti, analisi politiche che sono ancora oggi più attuali che mai", aggiungendo come, sempre loro, "i comunisti non possano in alcun modo macchiarsi della partecipazione a governi borghesi (le tristi esperienze del centrosinistra italiano insegnano)".

Nel frattempo, un altro utente, forse mosso da dubbi rispetto alla bontà del sistema concentrazionario dell'Urss di Stalin, posto però che le basi del gulag sono già nell' "incontaminato" Lenin, lo stesso cui Majakovskij dedicherà il poemetto omonimo, commenta dicendo che "Negli anni '30 photoshoppavano meglio di voi, fatevelo dire".

Cosa arriva dopo la tragedia cui è già seguita la farsa?

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Scherzo d'aprile | Il Partito comunista (italiano) ha cancellato Trotskij dalla foto con Lenin, di nuovo - Linkiesta.it

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Che ingiustizia, però! Trotskij, censurato ancora adesso, oltre cento anni dopo il tempo del suo Regno, cui seguirà la Caduta, l'Esilio e infine l'assassinio, per attenta mano di un agente segreto dell'Nkvd, la polizia staliniana, lo spagnolo Ramón Mercader, prozio per parte materna di Christian De Sica, bizzarrie della storia e del parentado.

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Eksempler på propaganda via photoshop, bl.a. Lenin, Trotsky

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Eksempler på propaganda via photoshop, bl.a. Lenin, Trotsky

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I primordi di photoshop: da Stalin a Mussolini, la storia del fotoritocco

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Stalin nel 1930 circa. Il dittatore russo era solito far cancellare i suoi nemici dalle foto. In questa immagini un commissario venne rimosso dopo esser caduto in disgrazia

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Anna Sol Jørgensen Jakob Albrecht Lucas Carn

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Medierne hoppede i med begge ben, da Christiansborg valgte Ukraines side - Journalisten

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Nyhedsmedierne var i den første måned af krigen i Ukraine ikke gode nok til at stille kritiske spørgsmål til de hurtige politiske aftaler om våbeneksport, hårde sanktioner og højere forsvarsudgifter. Krigen blev i høj grad skildret fra Ukraines synspunkt, fordi mediernes sympati lå hos den ukrainske…

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kraine's National Cancer Institute occupies three smoke-grey, six‑storey blocks in a residential district on the edge of Kiev. The external walls are tiled, with occasional scars where the bricks peep through. When Soviet workmen completed the facade, they built the date - "1968" - into it. Since then, maintenance appears to have been erratic. Nonetheless, business at the institute has always been brisk, and is getting brisker.

Half of Ukraine's men, and a fifth of its women, smoke; the national diet is heavy with animal fat; the national drink is vodka. Radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spread thyroid cancers throughout the 1980s generation, increasing the incidence among children tenfold. There are few family doctors, which means that breast, prostate and bowel tumours often go undetected for months. Survival rates for these cancers are among the worst in Europe.

In 2008, Professor Igor Shchepotin, an experienced Ukrainian-born surgeon, predicted in a magazine interview that the number of new diagnoses of cancer would continue to rise from 165,000 annually to 200,000 by 2020. That year, President Viktor Yushchenko picked Shchepotin out as Ukraine's champion in a new war on cancer. Shchepotin took charge of the Cancer Institute, which is both the country's leading cancer hospital and its premier research institution, and was granted extensive powers to mend Ukraine's health, including a budget independent of the health ministry, so that he could buy his own medicines and equipment. In Britain, he would be known as the "cancer tsar"; in Ukraine, he is called the "chief oncologist". And he has been an effective one, according to the institute's own assessment.

"Under the leadership of Professor Shchepotin, new approaches, conceptions and technology have been introduced, new principles for treating cancer patients, a significant proportion of whom have been returned to a fully active life," the institute said in a summary of its work published in April.

The Cancer Institute, though no more modern inside than out, feels reassuring. Surgeons in white coats discuss cases as they walk to the operating theatres. Nurses bustle around, bearing armfuls of folders. In the corridors, patients sit on folding cinema-style seats talking on their phones, while their relatives try to catch the doctors' attention. Old women dressed in green scrubs mop floors with disinfectant, giving the building a chemical tang that clings to your clothes long after you leave.

It feels like a place where patients can come knowing that the goal is to get them well again. But three surgeons working here, a former health minister, patients and anti-corruption activists all claim that this is not the whole story. They claim that the hospital, like government bodies all over Ukraine, appears to have been infected by corruption. And despite widespread public anger at the nation's corruption problem, which has provoked two revolutions in a decade, no one appears able or willing to do anything about it.

resumably there is money," said Konstantin Sidorenko, a consultant anaesthetist at the institute, when we first met in July. "But for some reason that money doesn't reach the most important places, like intensive care. So it means we have to earn everything ourselves."

The phrase "earn everything ourselves", he explained, is a euphemism for taking bribes, though Sidorenko was quick to point out that this wasn't something he wanted to do. He led the team of doctors running intensive care, so he was responsible for the institute's most vulnerable patients. Clinically, he felt he had no choice but to take the money.

We were on the sixth floor, sitting in his office, which was about the size of a typical bathroom. Sidorenko, who had greying, wavy hair and a friendly, open face, reached into the pocket of his white coat and took out a small cubic box. It contained an oxygen sensor for a respirator, the machines that provide air for patients unable to breathe for themselves. Each sensor costs around 4,000 hryvnias (UAH), currently £164, and each of his 10 respirators needs a replacement sensor at least once a year: UAH 40,000 (£1,649) in total. And that is just a tiny part of the money he needs to keep his machines working, which exceeds UAH 700,000 (£28,850) annually. For the last two years, he claimed, the institute had not provided him with sufficient money for maintenance, despite his repeated requests at clinical meetings.

I have equipment worth millions. I need to service it or it will break and patients will die. Where do I get the money?

"I have equipment worth millions, and I need to service it or it will break and my patients will die. I need to service it, but where do I get the money?" In other words, he had a dilemma: be honest and a bad doctor, or take bribes and be a good doctor. It is humiliating, but there is only one answer. "My doctors understand, and the patients pay," Sidorenko said.

Behind my chair was a tall settle, the kind found in former Soviet flats from Kiev to Kamchatka. The top half was a display cabinet full of medical books and files. Below that was a cupboard. Sidorenko squeezed past me to open the door and brought out a stack of envelopes so tall it required both hands to steady it. Some of them were half an inch thick, and all of them were full of banknotes.

He explained that almost all of his doctors collect the money from patients, then pass it on to him. He uses it to maintain the machines that keep his patients alive. These are the realities of being a doctor in Ukraine, he said. He was better qualified than most to assess the situation, since he sat on the commission that chooses which equipment the institute should buy. He said he had seen how the hospital systematically overpays for the equipment it buys and alleged that the institute had once bought a respirator for €130,000 more than it was worth. That €130,000 would have supplied his respirators with sensors for 40 years. Sidorenko had only one explanation for why the hospital would overpay for equipment: some managers were engaged in secret deals with the suppliers to defraud the state budget, and then dividing up the extra money among themselves. Essentially, Sidorenko's patients, via their kickbacks, were making up the shortfall. Shchepotin, the head of the institute, refused to comment on the specific allegations made by Sidorenko that such practices were taking place at the institute.

Sidorenko had another reason to be frustrated. He had 23 years of experience, but earned only €300 a month, barely enough to feed his four young children, let alone to pay the numerous small bribes - to teachers, traffic police, plumbers, tax officers - that are part of everyday life in Ukraine.

iev has a grand opera house, cathedrals, chain stores, sweeping central avenues, a metro, everything required to make a place look European. But it resembles a modern European capital city only in the way the Cancer Institute resembles a hospital. Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index - the most widely used indicator of corruption worldwide - rates Ukraine 142nd in the world, alongside Uganda. In the latest ranking, it fell behind Nigeria.

Since 1991, officials, members of parliament and businessmen have created complex and highly lucrative schemes to plunder the state budget. The theft has crippled Ukraine. The economy was as large as Poland's at independence, now it is a third of the size. Ordinary Ukrainians have seen their living standards stagnate, while a handful of oligarchs have become billionaires.

Public fury has fuelled two revolutions. In 2004, street protests helped Viktor Yushchenko defeat an attempt by the then prime minister Viktor Yanukovych to rig the presidential election. During his five years in power, however, Yushchenko failed to dislodge the networks of patronage. Amid widespread disillusionment, he lost the 2010 election to Yanukovych, who was in turn driven out in February 2014, after corruption mutated into still more virulent forms.

Officials from the general prosecutor's office, who were interviewed by Reuters, claimed that between 2010 and 2014, officials were stealing a fifth of the country's national output every year. This behaviour has infected all sectors of Ukrainian society. President Yanukovych lived in a vast palace on the edge of Kiev. After he fled, protesters found millions of dollars worth of paintings, icons, books and ceramics stacked in his garage. He'd had nowhere to display them.

The protesters camping out on the Maidan in central Kiev last winter wanted to prevent a repeat of 2004, when the old networks of corruption simply absorbed the new officials. Among those protesters was Andrei Semivolos, a pale, slim, dark-haired surgeon from the Cancer Institute with a mauve birthmark on his right temple. He had volunteered as a medic during the protests on the Maidan, patching up protesters beaten by police. He had returned to the institute determined to help change his workplace as he had helped change the government.

One of President Yanukovych's last attempts to salvage his image had been a televised visit to the institute, when he had handed out gifts to sick children, their heads bald from chemotherapy. Shchepotin, the chief oncologist, stood by his side, beaming. The publicity stunt failed to rehabilitate Yanukovych's reputation, and a fortnight later, on 22 February 2014, he fled. Soon after, Shchepotin, who had previously been a loyal supporter of Yanukovych, announced that the institute would be raising money to support the new government's army - a move that surprised Semivolos. To him, it sounded like Shchepotin was trying to ingratiate himself with the new order.

Semivolos wrote a long Facebook post on 20 March, in which he criticised the way Ukraine is run, Shchepotin, and what he called "past-it Soviet relics". Facebook had played an important role in catalysing the protests that swelled into revolution over the winter. Ukrainians knew how such posts could go viral and quickly energise mass protests. Shchepotin moved fast to respond to Semivolos's criticism by convening the Cancer Institute's "collective". Gathering the "collective" is a Soviet-era practice that nominally allows workers to hold managers to account. Managers control attendance, however, meaning they can keep a tight grip on proceedings.

"You get the impression that among us there is only one hero who won the revolution, and who's now fighting for the truth," Shchepotin told the assembled crowd. "But you are seriously mistaken, Dr Semivolos. Here are your colleagues and they are looking you in the eyes and saying what they think of you." Shchepotin pointed out that Semivolos's team of doctors had the worst performance record in the hospital, and speculated that Semivolos had posted the criticism to distract attention from his own incompetence. Those present voted unanimously to condemn Semivolos and to declare his opinion of Shchepotin false. For good measure, TV cameras came in to film tearful co-workers upbraiding Semivolos for injuring the institute's reputation. Among a crowd of colleagues, he looked pale and alone.

In April, Semivolos responded by setting up a trade union with a dozen or so like-minded colleagues. He organised two protests outside the health ministry to demand an investigation into the hospital, to ask - among other questions - why no action had been taken after a 2009 probe suggested evidence of corruption there.

"We must remove corruption in Ukrainian healthcare like we would a malignant tumour," he wrote on Facebook on April 14. But his chances of success looked slim. Semivolos and his friends were fighting a hardened bureaucracy that was reasserting itself. There might have been a revolution on the Maidan, but here in the institute, it seemed that everything would proceed as normal.

Semivolos, however, was not alone. He had gained an ally in a very high place.

fter Yanukovych fled last February, the new administration - headed by the speaker of parliament, who became acting president - gave control of most ministries to insiders and veteran politicians. This led to much muttering about how the old elite had clung on to power. Three new ministers, however, came from the Maidan protesters, and one of them was Oleg Musy. Slim and tanned, with a slight, grey beard, he looks like a 1970s musician - perhaps a member of the Police - on a comeback tour. Musy had headed the Maidan's medical volunteers, organising treatment for hypothermia and gunshot wounds.

In February, he became the new health minister, and embarked on an ambitious reform programme. He wanted to transform Ukrainian healthcare along European lines, and to clean up the process whereby the state buys drugs and equipment. Traditionally, Ukrainian officials have had wide discretion over which companies to approve and which to exclude, which, it is claimed, gives them the chance to make insider deals, inflate prices and steal with impunity. Musy wanted to end this practice and to dismiss anyone found to be involved in these deals.

This was a dangerous undertaking. In 2009, Yushchenko had commissioned a security operative, who specialised in organised crime, to lead an internal report into healthcare corruption. The report exposed how businessmen use offshore shell companies to conspire with corrupt officials, rig state tenders and jack up prices. Within weeks of the report being completed, an assailant threw a grenade at the operative who had written it, as he got out of his car on Tatarska Street in central Kiev. Shrapnel shredded his car, and scarred the nearby buildings. The man survived but only after extensive surgery at a specialist unit in Israel. His report was never officially published - although it was leaked online - and the assailant was never found.

Musy was not deterred, however, and began work on his reforms as soon as he took up his position. When I met him in August, he was startlingly open about the problems he faced. For a health system to function, he said, it needs 6-7% of all the money a country earns. The Ukrainian government was allocating only 3.5%, yet mysteriously the system continued to limp along.

"The question is why hasn't it died altogether?" he said. "And the answer is that additional finances are found from somewhere. Today the state pays around UAH 52bn (£2.1bn) into the healthcare system. Naturally, around the same amount is coming from somewhere else."

If Musy's sums are correct, every man, woman and child in Ukraine pays an average of UAH 1,000 (£41) in bribes each year to keep the healthcare system operational. Considering that so much of the health budget is said to be stolen rather than used productively - Musy put theft from the medicines budget alone at 30-40% - the total is likely to be far higher. Among many examples, he said that in 2013 the ministry had bought 1,412 new ambulances, with the price of every vehicle inflated by UAH 200,000 (£8,223) - almost 50% of their true cost. "This isn't business, it is earning money dishonestly," he said.

Musy said a key front in his campaign for reform was the Cancer Institute. On June 26, he announced the results of an investigation into the hospital, detailing 43 alleged violations of the law. Among them were claims that patients had been forced to buy expensive medicines, even though those medicines had already been paid for by the state, and that equipment costing around UAH 42 million, bought in 2011, was gathering dust in a store cupboard, never used, with the warranty expired.

"This is the personal responsibility of the director," Musy claimed in interviews with reporters. He said the details had been passed to police, who would interview Shchepotin in his capacity as head of the institute. He believed that the suspicion alone was grounds to sack Shchepotin, although that could not happen just yet, because Shchepotin had gone on sick leave. Under Ukrainian law, that meant he could not be dismissed for four months, not until October.

In brief comments to the Guardian, Shchepotin stated that claims of criminality at the institute were "lies". He refused to comment on further questions about widespread corruption at the institute. In a television documentary broadcast on 20 December, Sergei Kaplin, a populist member of Ukraine's parliament, who presents a weekly investigative series called People's Prosecutor, challenged Shchepotin over corruption allegations. In one scene, Kaplin burst into Shchepotin's office with a camera crew. Shchepotin repeatedly refused to talk to him, unless he produced a search warrant.

ost patients come to the Cancer Institute via regional hospitals, so relatives caring for them need to find accommodation in Kiev. A charity called Zaporuka, which helps children with cancer, provides rooms for six families, in a large, detached house on a winding suburban street not far from the institute. Zaporuka's budget is about €500,000 a year - most of this comes from European donors - and it pays the salaries of two psychologists and two physiotherapists who work at the Cancer Institute. Natalia Onipko, who heads Zaporuka, is slight, with her blonde hair in a bob that falls onto her shoulders.

The patients are scared. Any complaint would have them sent back to their regional hospital - a death sentence

"I often think about how much easier it would be for the doctors to work if they could just do what they are supposed to be doing," she told me. In a decade of working with parents, almost all of whom had paid bribes so their children could be treated, Onipko had never known anyone make an official complaint. "They're scared, of course they're scared," she explained. "Any scandal would end with them being sent back to their regional hospital. Do you understand what that would mean?"

Facilities are basic at the institute, but children coming there receive care from the country's top specialists, something they could not hope for in the provinces. Doctors have total discretion over which patients to admit or discharge, so it is not surprising that parents are anxious to keep them happy: giving them gifts, paying the amounts suggested, never speaking out. There are more cancer patients than there are beds - being sent back home would be a death sentence.

We walked through to the kitchen, where six women sat around the table, chatting over tea as if they were old friends rather than strangers brought together by the awful coincidence of their children having cancer. At first, when I spoke to them, it seemed the mothers were reluctant to admit to breaking the law. It soon turned out they were simply struggling to understand what I was asking. Bribes were so ordinary that it seemed bizarre someone would have come all the way from Britain to ask questions about them. Eventually, however, one woman, who was from eastern Ukraine, explained how her doctor had extorted money: "He wrote 100 on a piece of paper, then pointed his fingers upwards. That meant dollars."

That prompted another woman to recall an encounter with a different doctor: "I remember the first time I saw him, he was winking and nodding his head, and I thought he had a tic or something; that he was mentally unwell. But actually he was catching my attention. Then he held out two fingers." Here she placed two fingers on her arm, as if she were playing charades. "That meant 200."

"Hundred?" a third woman asked, "you mean thousand." They all laughed.

As we walked out, Onipko explained that one of her most important jobs was to keep these parents' spirits up. They were not only struggling to support their children through a terrible illness, but also trying to navigate a health system apparently determined to exploit their desperation for financial gain. "I try not to criticise the doctors in front of the parents, because they have to trust their doctors," she said.

I heard the same stories throughout the institute: there was little money for maintenance, medicine or salaries, little interest in the patients, or in the medics doing the work of keeping people alive. One morning, I visited one of the institute's laboratories. Apart from some microscopes - given by donors eight years ago - the equipment in the department had not changed for two decades, according to one person who worked there.

From the facilities you would never have guessed this was one of the institute's most important departments. Patients' biopsies were stored on their original slides, between cardboard dividers, and kept in an index, like in an old library. These slides are crucial for diagnosing cancer. Doctors look at them through microscopes to determine the type and virulence of a patient's condition. Examples have to be stored in case the patient suffers a relapse. To prepare the biopsies, the lab workers drip purple dye onto slides suspended over an enamelled basin, which was once white but, after decades of use, is now dark purple.

onths passed before I next saw Oleg Musy, in a canteen in central Kiev, in one of the battered and dirty buildings that had been used as a headquarters for the revolutionaries. It was November and he wore a black leather jacket against the cold. He looked paler, and tired. The previous month, on 1 October, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had suspended Musy from his duties. Musy had, he said, failed to buy the medicines the country needed. It was a tough time, with the Ukrainian army at war with Russian-backed separatists in the east, the economy contracting, the currency plunging. The government needed competent officials, not revolutionaries engaged in quixotic ideological crusades.

Over the previous few months, many of Musy's supporters had turned against him. Patients of Ukraine, a charity that campaigns vigorously against corruption, accused Musy of conducting his battles at the price of sacrificing sick Ukrainians. It was urgent that the ministry buy drugs, they said, even at the cost of making deals with the businessmen who got rich from corrupt deals with the old government. That was not a point of view Musy shared.

"I will tell the truth," he said. "The prime minister sent people from his own team to watch what was happening in the health ministry. I did not agree with their schemes, specifically with them maintaining the old ... schemes during the health ministry tenders."

After Musy was suspended from his position, the old networks had re-established themselves, he said, as if nothing had happened. Musy claimed that some of the officials who ran procurement under Yanukovych were back, because the new government had failed to find anyone else with the expertise to navigate the ocean of paperwork required to buy medicine. Musy said this left the system open to the same kind of abuse the revolutionaries had promised to end. "It's right that the west doesn't want to give us money, that they say we're not fighting against corruption. There isn't a fight against corruption," he said.

And what about the Cancer Institute? On 2 October, the day after Musy's suspension, Shchepotin returned to work. Had Musy kept his powers for three more days, he claims he could have sacked Shchepotin, whose four months of sick leave was almost spent. "He was ill for four months, and had only three more days in which to be ill. But I was suspended, and he came back to work."

he next evening, I visited Semivolos in his 13th-floor apartment on the edge of town to find out how his battle with Shchepotin was going. Semivolos made us tea and we sat in the kitchen. His wife kept us company and his son came in occasionally to give them both hugs. It was a cosy scene, the fridge covered in colourful magnets from foreign cities, cakes on the table, but he was gloomy.

He began our conversation with a 20-minute overview of the last millennium of Ukraine's history. The basic message was one of survival against catastrophic odds. "How many revolutions did the French have? Four? And only then did they get their republic," he said. "We have total corruption - it couldn't be more total. Cleaners don't clean if you don't give them money; ministers won't govern if you don't give them money."

The personal clash between Semivolos and Shchepotin is now playing out in court. Shchepotin has sued Semivolos for defamation for his Facebook posts, claiming that "the negative information causes me great moral suffering and concern over my honour, my dignity, and my good name. People have lost their trust in me as a doctor, and now are unwilling to come to me for help." The hearings are ongoing.

Semivolos laughed it off , but the issue is serious - Ukraine's courts can be unpredictable.

During my time in the institute, I only saw Shchepotin once. He was at the end of a corridor, walking away from me, and was gone before I could get close. He agreed to talk by telephone, but refused to answer any questions about the specific allegations made against the institute and him. He insisted that he really had been ill and rejected any suggestion that the health ministry investigation had uncovered anything serious.

"There are a few facts, but they are not cause for an investigation, a probe, or anything," he said. When I asked him about the defamation case he had brought against Semivolos, he said I was an "unserious person", and "interested in gossip, rumours and the rest. These are the kind of things you find in the tabloids, and I don't give interviews to the tabloids." Then he put the phone down.

I sent a list of further questions via his secretary, but she returned it with the words "no comment" scrawled on it above his initials and the date - 27 November. I sent further requests for comment, detailing the allegations in this article, but they went unanswered.

hat same day, 27 November, Ukraine's new members of parliament took their seats, including Oleg Musy, who had been elected to represent a constituency in western Ukraine's Lviv region. I watched the proceedings on a television in a small Kiev cafe called Mon Ami. It is near the administrative quarter, and I was due to meet a source who has worked as a senior official in various ministries since the days of Yushchenko.

He was late, bustling in and excusing himself with a wave in the direction of the television, where a succession of deputies were giving interviews and explaining how important it was to combat corruption. My source looked exhausted, and started explaining the situation before he had even removed his coat.

We are fighting real guys, you know. They look fine, they look respectable, but behind the curtain there is blood

"It's really difficult to beat these people. They control everything. It is like a hydra. They have secret service officers, prosecutors," he said. "We are fighting real guys, you know. I would make a parallel with Colombia and the drugs cartels. They look fine, they look respectable, but behind the curtain there is blood."

He ordered a filled croissant, and I had mushroom soup. We sat watching the deputies on television milling about: many of them in uniform, others in the embroidered shirts that are a nationalist symbol. Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko appeared together in a show of unity. There was a brief glimpse of Musy on screen, his handsome face turned towards one of his fellow members of parliament, listening patiently.

"It's a real problem," my lunch partner said, nodding towards the dethroned health minister. "Who do you want? A patriot but a disastrous manager, or an effective manager with questions hanging over him?"

I ate my soup and we discussed how businessmen who had got rich under Yanukovych, had quietly returned to Kiev in recent months. "We took away Yanukovych and his guys but it's another matter replacing all their schemes," he said. "Everyone is ready to carry out reforms, to make everything open, except for things that affect themselves."

On 2 December, parliament approved a new health minister - Ukraine's third in the year. He was Alexander Kvitashvili, a Georgian given Ukrainian citizenship especially for the job. Officials hoped that the fact he was foreign, and unconnected to any existing power structures meant he would be able to shake up the country's hospitals in the way no Ukrainian could manage. Georgia is one of the few countries in the old Soviet Union that has managed to restrict corruption, if only at lower levels of officialdom.

The day after his appointment, the Kiev Post reported that Kvitashvili was confident he would be able to carry out genuine reform to Ukraine's healthcare system. On 21 January, he confirmed that although the current health care funding system will remain the same in 2015, he would also begin introducing new funding mechanisms for hospital treatment. On 3 February, the latest stage in Kvitashvili's reforms was announced: the health ministry stated that it will not renew Shchepotin's contract when it runs out on 11 February.

Commenting on allegations of corruption within the healthcare system in a statement to Patients of Ukraine, Kvitashvili said: "Sadly, owing to imperfections in Ukrainian legislation, dishonest managers can't be dismissed even for abuse of power."

He continued by stating that the health ministry would conduct an "open and honest competition" to find a new director for the institute. "I really hope the police will finish their work and," he added, "if any employees of the institute are found guilty, they will be held responsible for profiting from human misery."
Follow the Long Read on Twitter: @gdnlongread

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Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe

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kraine's National Cancer Institute occupies three smoke-grey, six‑storey blocks in a residential district on the edge of Kiev. The external walls are tiled, with occasional scars where the bricks peep through. When Soviet workmen completed the facade, they built the date - "1968" - into it. Since then, maintenance appears to have been erratic.

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Nel saggio "L'Europa in camicia nera. L'estrema destra dagli anni Novanta a oggi" (Meltemi) lo storico Elia Rosati analizza radici e tendenze ideologiche del "fascismo del terzo millennio". Per gentile concessione dell'editore ne proponiamo un estratto.

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Cinque domande sulle destre radicali europeo-occidentali

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Nel saggio "L'Europa in camicia nera. L'estrema destra dagli anni Novanta a oggi" (Meltemi) lo storico Elia Rosati analizza radici e tendenze ideologiche del "fascismo del terzo millennio". Per gentile concessione dell'editore ne proponiamo un estratto.

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Molti analisti fanno risalire quello che sta accadendo in Ucraina in queste ore alle proteste antirusse e pro Europa di piazza Maidan del 2014. In quella piazza erano presenti anche non pochi esponenti di forze di estrema destra, se non espressamente neonaziste. Che ruolo hanno svolto allora queste forze?
Con la rivolta di Maidan il panorama del nazismo ucraino si è frastagliato e da quella rivolta di piazza sono nati anche piccoli gruppetti. Tradizionalmente la formazione egemone in quest'area politica è il partito neonazista Svoboda, la formazione più antica, fondata nel 1991 quando si chiamava Partito Socialnazionalista d'Ucraina. È però a partire dal 2004, quando ha assunto la denominazione Svoboda, che ha iniziato a rafforzarsi. Il suo logo è una runa utilizzata dalle SS come mostrina militare (il gancio di Lupo), che è anche un simbolo del neofascismo e neonazismo a livello mondiale, spesso utilizzato in Italia per esempio da Forza Nuova. Il loro primo exploit avviene nelle elezioni parlamentari del 2012. Si tratta del periodo in cui si consolida la virata verso la Russia dell'Ucraina con Yanukovich che ha avuto un ruolo di primo piano dal 2002 e che poi è stato presidente dell'Ucraina dal 2010 al 2014: una sorta di eterno leader di grande fedeltà putiniana. Risale a quel periodo, per esempio, l'accordo di Kharkov che concedeva ai russi delle basi navali, come quella di Sebastopoli. È lì che inizia la forte polemica antirussa, perché si aveva la sensazione di un paese quasi occupato dai russi. Svoboda cavalcò particolarmente l'opposizione a Yanukovic auspicandone anche più volte l'impeachment e chiedendo per esempio di chiudere le basi navali russe aperte con l'accordo di Kharkov. Nel 2012 questa campagna antirussa molto brutale gli fruttò il 10,4% con 38 deputati. A Maidan poi faranno la parte del leone, tanto è vero che dopo la rivolta diventano brevemente una delle forze che fa parte del governo provvisorio, ottenendo dunque un riconoscimento politico da parte del post-Maidan. Stiamo parlando di un partito autoritario, neonazista, omofobo, xenofobo, che sostiene il diritto di portare le armi, chiede l'abolizione dell'aborto ecc. Dal 2010 i dirigenti di Svoboda compiono una svolta ideologica, diventando sostenitori dell'entrata dell'Ucraina nella NATO, in funzione antirussa naturalmente. Ed è cavalcando quel sentimento antirusso che si rafforzano e riescono ad entrare nel governo provvisorio. Ma è una bolla che scoppia presto. Poroshenko li caccia via rapidamente e questo rappresenta la fine di Svoboda che alle elezioni del 2019 scende al 2,15 ottenendo un solo deputato, il loro leader Oleh Jaroslavovyč Tjahnybok. Anche se è ancora presente in alcuni parlamenti regionali ed è piuttosto radicata in un quartiere di Kiev, stiamo dunque parlando di un partito oggi molto piccolo, che però è stato molto abile a capitalizzare il sentimento antirusso grandemente diffuso in Ucraina.

Oggi, dunque, non svolgono più alcun ruolo?
Questo purtroppo non si può dire, perché, pur essendo di fatto ininfluenti sul piano politico, continuano ad esser molto presenti in particolare fra le milizie antirusse che combattono al confine con le repubbliche separatiste del Donbass, quelle la cui indipendenza ha di recente riconosciuto Putin, dove c'è una conflittualità latente da molti anni. E questo si può dire anche per il gruppo paramilitareneonazista di Pravy Sektor. Parliamo di milizie informali, tollerate se non addirittura sfruttate dall'esercito ucraino per contenere i separatisti. Si tratta anche di milizie piuttosto ben equipaggiate (da chi non è dato sapere...) e che ricevono rinforzi anche da combattenti neonazisti provenienti dal resto d'Europa.

Questa svolta atlantista ed europeista, per quanto solo strumentale in chiave antirussa, porta questi gruppi neonazisti ucraini ad allontanarsi dalle altre forze di estrema destra europee...
Esatto, perché tutte le forze che erano state loro alleate fino ad allora - dalla Fiamma Tricolore a Forza Nuova passando per il British National Party e al Partido Nacional Renovador portoghese - erano tutti fortemente anti-Nato e, a partire più o meno dal 2014, filo-Putin. È in quel momento, infatti, che si crea questa nuova famiglia sovranista europea affascinata da Putin, che va da Salvini a Le Pen. Non si tratta però di un fascino puramente ideologico, dietro ci sono anche precisi interessi: basti pensare all'associazione filoleghista di Amicizia Italia Russia fatta da imprenditori lombardi o ai chiacchierati legami di Salvini con il mondo russo o ancora all'enorme fideiussione che, è emerso, ha avuto Le Pen per ben due campagne presidenziali da parte di finanziarie russe. Per non parlare nel 2019 dello scandalo che ha coinvolto il sovranista austriaco Christian Strache e alcuni speculatori russi, costatogli la fine della sua avventura di governo.

Alla luce dell'invasione dell'Ucraina, che naturalmente rinfocola i sentimenti antirussi della popolazione, queste formazioni possono tornare ad avere un ruolo di primo piano un po' come ai tempi di Maidan?
Secondo me assolutamente no perché le forze sono impari. Un conto è scontrarsi con la polizia a Maidan o anche con le milizie filorusse nel Donbass, un altro con l'esercito russo.

Una delle motivazioni retoriche avanzate da Putin per questa invasione è proprio quella di voler "denazificare" l'Ucraina...
Questo fa parte della retorica di questa nuova "grande guerra patriottica". Putin ha fatto un discorso che sostanzialmente mette lo zar, l'Unione Sovietica e lui in un'unica grande narrazione storica dell'imperialismo russo. Ma questo non c'entra niente con la "denazificazione" dell'Ucraina, che non è affatto nazificata, pur avendo certamente una presenza importante di forze neonaziste. Questo però non è uno scontro ideologico ma geopolitico.
Qui un estratto dell'ultimo libro di Elia Rosati, "L'Europa in camicia nera" Guerra in Ucraina. Tutte le notizie sulla crisi con la Russia CREDIT FOTO: Miliziani del battaglione Azov - © Serg Glovny/ZUMA Wire MicroMega non è più in edicola: la puoi acquistare nelle librerie e su SHOP.MICROMEGA.NET, anche in versione digitale, con la possibilità di scegliere tra vantaggiosi pacchetti di abbonamento.

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Quegli strani neonazisti europeisti e atlantisti in Ucraina

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Molti analisti fanno risalire quello che sta accadendo in Ucraina in queste ore alle proteste antirusse e pro Europa di piazza Maidan del 2014. In quella piazza erano presenti anche non pochi esponenti di forze di estrema destra, se non espressamente neonaziste. Che ruolo hanno svolto allora queste forze?

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The All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" ( Ukrainian: Всеукраїнське об'єднання "Свобода", Vseukrainske obiednannia "Svoboda"), referred to as Svoboda, is an ultranationalist political party in Ukraine. It has been led by Oleh Tyahnybok since 2004.

It formed and officially registered as a political party in October 1995. It was characterized as a radical right-wing populist party that combined elements of ethnic ultranationalism and anti-communism. During the 1990s, it was accused of neo-Nazism due to the party's recruitment of skinheads and usage of neo-Nazi symbols. Tyahnybok was elected in 2004 as the president of the party and shortly after he made efforts to moderate the party's image by changing the party's name and symbols and expelling neo-Nazi and neofascist groups.

Although Tyahnybok expelled neofascist groups from his party, it never abandoned ethnic ultranationalist views. The party gained increasing popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s, winning 10.45% of the vote in the 2012 parliamentary election. Between 2009 and 2014, it was an observer member of the far-right Alliance of European National Movements. It played a major role in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Euromaidan protests but its support dropped quickly following the 2014 elections. Since then, Svoboda has been polling below the electoral threshold, and it currently has one seat in the Verkhovna Rada.

Svoboda's political position has been described as right-wing or far-right. Widely described as an ultranationalist and right-wing populist party, it expressed support and staged commemorations honoring early 20th century right-wing Ukrainian politician and theorist Stepan Bandera, and it opposes immigration, globalism and free trade. It is staunchly anti-communist and conservative regarding social issues, and it favors economic nationalism and protectionism. It has been also widely considered as a neofascist, neo-Nazi and antisemitic party by multiple journalists and organizations, although those labels are disputed, while some consider them as a radical-right nationalist party.

The Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) was registered as a party on 16 October 1995; the constituent congress of the party took place on 13 October 1991, in Lviv. The party was established by the Soviet Afghan War veterans organization, the youth organization "Spadshchyna" ( Heritage, headed by Andriy Parubiy), the Lviv Student Fraternity (headed by Oleh Tyahnybok), the Rukh Guard (headed by Yaroslav Andrushkiv and Yuriy Kryvoruchko). Dr. Yaroslav Andrushkiv was elected leader of the party. The party adopted a party emblem that could be associated with fascist formation and in Europe is used by neo-Nazi organizations.

Due to a corporate raid threat on temples of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate), there were created SNPU formations for their protection, particularly the Holy-Dormition Church of Volodymyr and the Saint Trinity Church in Lutsk. Due to the 1993 Massandra Accords, SNPU formed the Extraordinary Committee in Rescue of Nation and State which in the fall of 1993 picketed the Ukrainian parliament in regards to eliminate the threat of loss by Ukraine the Crimea and Black Sea Fleet.

The SNPU's official program defined itself as an "irreconcilable enemy of Communist ideology" and all other parties to be either collaborators and enemies of the Ukrainian revolution, or romanticists. According to Svoboda's website, during the 1994 Ukrainian parliamentary elections the party presented its platform as distinct from those of the communists and social democrats.

In the 1998 parliamentary elections the party joined a bloc of parties (together with the All-Ukrainian Political Movement "State Independence of Ukraine") called "Fewer Words" ( Ukrainian: Менше слів), which collected 0.16% of the national vote. Party member Oleh Tyahnybok was voted into the Ukrainian Parliament in this election. He became a member of the People's Movement of Ukraine faction.

The SNPU established the paramilitary organization Patriot of Ukraine in 1999 as an "Association of Support" for the Military of Ukraine and registered with the Ministry of Justice. The paramilitary organization was disbanded in 2004 during the SNPU's reformation but was reconstituted as an independent organization in 2005. Svoboda officially ended association with the group in 2007, but they remain informally linked, with representatives of Svoboda attending social campaigns such as protests against price increases and leafleting against drugs and alcohol. In 2014, Svoboda was noted for clashing with the far-right group Right Sector, a coalition which included Patriot of Ukraine.

In 2001, the party joined some actions of the " Ukraine without Kuchma" protest campaign and was active in forming the association of Ukraine's rightist parties and in supporting Viktor Yushchenko's candidacy for prime minister, although it did not participate in the 2002 parliamentary elections. However, as a member of Victor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc, Tyahnybok was reelected to the Ukrainian parliament. The SNPU won two seats in the Lviv oblast council of deputies and representation in the city and district councils in the Lviv and Volyn oblasts.[third-party source needed ]

In 2004 the party had less than 1,000 members.

In February 2004, the arrival of Oleh Tyahnybok as party leader led a significant change in moderating the Social-National Party's image. Then still the Social-National Party of Ukraine, it changed its name to the All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda", and abandoned the "I + N" (Ukrainian "Ідея Нації" "Idea Natsii" = "idea of a nation") Wolfsangel logo (a symbol popular among neo-Nazi groups) with a three-fingered hand reminiscent of the 'Tryzub' pro-independence gesture of the late 1980s. Svoboda also pushed neo-Nazi and other radical groups out the party, distancing itself from its neofascist past while retaining the support of extreme nationalists. Andrushkiv, former head of the party, rejected Tyahnybok's claim that Svoboda was successor party to the SNPU and called Svoboda 'a different political phenomenon.' Both he and Andriy Parubiy would leave the 'new' party following its transformation.

However, according to Polish lawyer and political scientist Tadeusz A. Olszański, party leader Tyahnybok never concealed that these changes were made primarily for image purposes. The party remained associated with the 'wide social nationalist movement' (consisting of numerous organisations and websites) and gathered around the Social-Nationalist Assembly which was set up in 2008. Yuri Mykhailyshyn, Tyahnybok's adviser who topped the list of Svoboda's Lviv branch in the 2010 municipal council elections, founded the Internet Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre (the centre later changed Goebbels for Ernst Jünger) in 2005. Ukraine's Patriot, a paramilitary organisation dissolved in 2004 and re-established in 2005 in a different legal form, continued to maintain ties with Svoboda. It was not until 2007 that this paramilitary organisation announced the break-up of all relationships with "Svoboda". Even then, some prominent Svoboda members, such as Andriy Illienko from Svoboda's Kyiv branch, continued to identify themselves with the ideas of "Patriot of Ukraine", which still uses the Wolfsangel symbol.

In 2004, Tyahnybok was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction for a speech calling for Ukrainians to fight against a " Muscovite- Jewish mafia", and celebrated the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists for having fought "Moscovites, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state." The speech was delivered at the grave-site of a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army where Tyahnybok praised its struggle against " Moskaly", a derogatory term for either Russians or pan-Russian nationalists; Germans; and " Zhydy", an archaic but controversial term for Jews in Ukraine due to it being a slur when used in the Russian language. Tyahnybok's 2004 comments were widely circulated on the three TV channels controlled by the head of the Presidential Administration, Viktor Medvedchuk: State Channel 1, 1+1 and Inter.

In the 2006 local elections the party had obtained 4.2% of the votes and 4 seats in the Ternopil Oblast Council, 5.62% of the votes and 10 seats in the Lviv Oblast Council and 6.69% of the votes and 9 seats in the Lviv city council.

In the 2007 parliamentary elections, the party received 0.76% of the votes cast, more than double their share during the 2006 parliamentary elections, when they received 0.36%. It was ranked eighth out of 20 parties (in the 2007 elections) and the non-participation of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists made the party the only far-right party to participate in the 2007 parliamentary elections.

Tyahnybok's candidacy in the 2010 presidential election did not build on the 2009 Ternopil success. Tyahnybok received 1.43% of the vote. Most of his votes he gained in Lviv oblast, Ternopil Oblast and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast accounted to 5% of the vote. In the second round, Tyahnybok did not endorse a candidate. He did present a list of some 20 demands for second round candidate Yulia Tymoshenko had to fulfil first before gaining his endorsement-which included publicizing alleged secret deals Tymoshenko had with Vladimir Putin and ridding herself of what he called Ukraine-haters in her close circles.

During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections the party won between 20-30% of the votes in Eastern Galicia, where it became one of the main forces in local government. The 2009 provincial elections in Ternopil had previously been the greatest success of the Svoboda party, when it won 34.4 per cent of votes cast. During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections, Svoboda surpassed this figure, accounting for 5.2% of the vote nationwide. Analysts explained Svoboda's victory in Galicia during the 2010 elections as a result of the policies of the Azarov Government, who were seen as too pro-Russian by the electorate. According to Andreas Umland, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Svoboda's increasing exposure in the Ukrainian media has contributed to its recent successes.

Between 2004 and 2010 party membership increased threefold to 15,000 members (traditionally party membership is low in Ukraine

As of 2011 Svoboda had factions in eight of Ukraine's 25 regional councils, and in three of those Svoboda is the biggest faction. Reportedly, the members and supporters of Svoboda are predominantly young people.

Several clergymen of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church are Svoboda members and have stood for election as Svoboda candidates. According to the party, they were chosen on election lists "to counterbalance opponents who include " Moscow priests" in their election lists and have aspirations to build the " Russian World" in Ukraine". Per the party's desire to separate the clergy from politics, all churchmen will be recalled if a draft Constitution of Ukraine proposed by the party is approved.

In early 2012 Svoboda was criticized in domestic and international media after party member Yuri Sirotyuk said that Ukrainian pop star Gaitana, who is of African descent, was a poor choice to represent Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 because she was "not an organic representative of the Ukrainian culture" Sirotyuk stated that "It looks like we don't want to show our face, and Ukraine will be associated with a different continent, somewhere in Africa."

In the run-up to the 2012 election, some Ukrainian media commentators and political analysts expected Svoboda's rising support would come at the expense of more mainstream elements of the opposition and to the benefit of the ruling Party of Regions. In July 2012 the party agreed with Batkivshchyna on the distribution of the candidates in single-seat constituencies (its share was 35 constituencies) in the October 2012 parliamentary elections. In the run up to these elections various opinion polls predicted the national vote (in a parliamentary election) of the party to sixfolded or sevenfolded which would make it possible that the party would pass the 5% election threshold. But the party's results in the elections were much better than that with 10.44 percent (almost a fourteenfold of its votes compared with the 2007 parliamentary elections) of the national votes and 38 out of 450 seats in the Ukrainian Parliament. The lion's share of these votes were won in Western Ukraine (30-40% in three Oblasts), while in Eastern Ukraine it won 1% of the votes. At the 116 foreign polling stations Svoboda won most votes of all parties with 23,63% of all votes. In Lviv the party reportedly won over 50% of the votes. In Kyiv it became the second most popular party, after Fatherland. Voting analysis showed it was the party most popular among voters with a higher education (about 48% of its voters had a higher education). Oleh Tyahnybok was elected leader of the party's parliamentary faction (also) on 12 December 2012. On 19 October 2012 the party and Batkivshchyna signed an agreement "on the creation of a coalition of democratic forces in the new parliament". The party is also coordinating its parliamentary activities with Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR).

In recent years, the BBC writes that "Svoboda" has "tapped a vast reservoir of protest votes" because of its anti-corruption stance and because it has softened its own image. According to Sociological group "RATING" the percentage of the party's electorate who only use the Ukrainian language decreased from 75% to 68% between September 2012 and March 2013.

2012 election aftermath and Euromaidan campaign

During the first two sessions of the newly elected parliament, Svoboda deputies and other opposition politicians physically clashed with MPs during the election of a prime minister and speaker amid allegations of continued voting for absent colleagues by government deputies. Clashes again erupted in March 2013 between Svoboda and Party of Regions MPs, when ruling Party of Regions MP Oleksandr Yefremov delivered a speech in Russian; the speech was drowned out by Svoboda MPs, shouting "Speak Ukrainian!" A later speech by Tyahnybok provoked chants of "Fascist" and a large, brief fist-fight between the two parties.

Svoboda MP and deputy leader Ihor Miroshnychenko attracted international criticism in December 2012 for writing on his Facebook wall that American actress Mila Kunis, who was born in the Ukrainian SSR of Jewish descent, is "not Ukrainian but a zhydivka" (a pejorative term for a Jew). According to Svoboda, the word does not have the antisemitic connotation in Ukrainian that it does in Russian. Citing a Ukrainian academic dictionary, the Ministry of Justice considered the word archaic but not necessarily a slur. Svoboda has repeatedly said that it would not stop using words it considers legitimate Ukrainian parlance. Attempts to use antisemitism as a propaganda weapon against the Euromaidan movement were noted, and reports of widespread antisemitism were disputed by analysts, historians and human-rights activists. In May 2013, Svoboda, Fatherland and UDAR announced that they would coordinate during the 2015 Ukrainian presidential election.

A 7-17 December 2013 opinion poll indicated that in a presidential election between Viktor Yanukovych and Svoboda leader Tyahnybok Tyahnybok would win 28.8 percent of the popular vote to Yanukovych's 27.1 percent. Svoboda participates in the ongoing pro-European Union protest campaign to influence regime change and integration with the EU. When the Vladimir Lenin monument in Kyiv was toppled during Euromaidan, MP Ihor Myroshnichenko accepted responsibility for the act on behalf of Svoboda.

Eighteen Svoboda members were killed in the Euromaidan protests and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. On 27 February 2014 the Yatsenyuk government was formed, including three Svoboda ministers: Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Ihor Shvaika and Environment and Natural Resources Minister Andriy Mokhnyk. Party members were appointed governors of Poltava ( Viktor Buhaychuk on 2 March 2014), Ternopil ( Oleh Syrotyuk on 2 March) and Rivne Oblasts ( Sergey Rybachka on 3 March 2014).

On 18 March 2014, Svoboda members posted an online video of party MPs beating acting National Television Company of Ukraine president Oleksandr Panteleymonov and trying to force him to sign a letter of resignation because he broadcast the Crimea accession to the Russian Federation ceremony in the Kremlin. In the video Panteleymonov's broadcast was called "state treason" by Svoboda MP Miroshnychenko, deputy head of the Parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information. Tyahnybok condemned the attack ("Such actions were fine yesterday (during the protests), but now they are inappropriate"), which was also condemned by Amnesty International and acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On 20 March 2014 Svoboda withdrew as observers from the Alliance of European National Movements (AENM) over sympathy by several alliance members for the Russian military intervention, and in June the party formed the Sich Battalion to fight the war in Donbass.

In the October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election the party won 6 constituency seats; the party fell short by 0.29% to overcome the required 5% threshold to win seats on the nationwide list. The parties election results thus halved compared with the 2012 election because of negative assessments of the activities of the local governments that included Svoboda members. In its former stronghold Lviv Oblast Svoboda won no constituencies. Also the fact that in this election the party was not the only one using radically patriotic, anti-communist and anti-Russian slogans undermined its election outcome.

On 12 November 2014 the party's ministers in the Yatsenyuk Government resigned (they became acting ministers till a new Government was formed). The parties governors of Poltava Oblast, Ternopil Oblast and Rivne Oblast also resigned and were formally dismissed by President Petro Poroshenko on 18 November 2014.

In West Ukraine Svoboda improved its electoral performance in the October 2015 Ukrainian local elections. In the elections its candidate Ruslan Martsinkiv was elected Mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk.

On 19 November 2018 Svoboda and fellow Ukrainian nationalist political organizations Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, Right Sector and C14 endorsed Ruslan Koshulynskyi candidacy in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. In the election he received 1.6% of the votes.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election other parties joined Svoboda to form a united party list; the Governmental Initiative of Yarosh, Right Sector and National Corps. But in the election they won 2.15% of the votes, less than half of the 5% election threshold, and thus no parliamentary seats via the national party list. The party did win one constituency seat, in Ivano-Frankivsk. In constituency 83 Svoboda candidate Oksana Savchuk won the party's sole constituency seat with 46.68% of the votes.

In the 2020 Ukrainian local elections Svoboda managed to secure first round re-election for their incumbent mayors in West Ukraine, in Ternopil ( Serhiy Nadal), Khmelnytskyi ( Oleksandr Symсhyshyn) and Ivano-Frankivsk (Ruslan Martsinkiv), but again failed at expanding its support base into other parts of the country. 863 people won seats in local councils on behalf of the party, that is about 2.61% of the available seats. The election gave the party 19 mayors, making the party ninth in the number of elected mayors.

Olexiy Haran, a political science professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, says "There is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding Svoboda" and that the party is not fascist, but radical. Ihor Kolomoyskyi, president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, stated in 2010 that the party has shifted from "ultranationalist closer to the center." However, the party have been involved in several actions against the country's minorities since then.[example needed ]

In 2012, political scientist Andreas Umland predicted the party would continue to become more moderate over time, and that "there's a belief that Svoboda will change, once in the Verkhovna Rada, and that they may become proper national democrats." Since then, the party has gained seats in parliament and has net over 10% of the national vote in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The US ambassador in Kyiv, Geoffrey Pyatt, said in 2014 that he had been "positively impressed" by Svoboda's evolution in opposition and by its behavior in parliament. "They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides," the ambassador asserted. Alexander J. Motyl argues that Svoboda's brand of nationalism "has significantly diminished during, and possibly as a result of, the Euro Revolution."

Membership was restricted to ethnic Ukrainians, and for a period the party did not accept atheists or former members of the Communist Party. The party has been accused of recruiting skinheads and football hooligans.

Ihor Tenyukh - acting Minister of Defense (February-March 2014), resigned on own initiative, resignation accepted by parliament after repeated voting

Oleh Makhnitsky - acting General Prosecutor February-June 2014 (not part of the Cabinet of Ukraine, officially unaffiliated)

Svoboda's ideological base emanates from Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yaroslav Stetsko's "Two Revolutions" doctrine (written in 1951). The essence of this doctrine states: "the revolution will not end with the establishment of the Ukrainian state, but will go on to establish equal opportunities for all people to create and share material and spiritual values and in this respect the national revolution is also a social one". A crucial condition for joining Svoboda is that its members must belong to the Ukrainian nation.

In the War in Donbass the party favors resolving the conflict through use of force.[clarification needed ]

The party describes its own agenda in an article entitled "Nationalism and pseudonationalism" published on its official website. Svoboda member Andriy Illienko calls for a "social and national revolution in Ukraine," a "major shift in [the] political, economic, [and] ethical system", and the "dismantling [of] the liberal regime of antinational occupation". Illienko explains that "only the revolution can now prevent Ukraine from the brink, and make it the first modern nationalist state that will ensure continuous development of the Ukrainian nation, and show other nations the path to genuine sovereignty and prosperity."[third-party source needed ]. Illienko continues that cultural details are not important for a nationalist who "must wake up with the idea that he is a metal political soldier of Nation." ("Націоналіст... забов'язаний просинатися з думкою, що він - залізний політичний солдат Нації..."). This document sets up the enemy of Svoboda, a pseudonationalist, a person who wants "all-ukrainian values" ("українськість","щоб все було українське") and adheres to "conventional liberalism [of] 'civilized' Western democracy and capitalism". Another attribute of a pseudonationalist is the belief in "Free market", "democracy", "fighting authoritarianism" [the quotes are from the original document].

Party leader Tyahnybok has argued that "depicting nationalism as extremism is a cliché rooted in Soviet and modern globalist propaganda" and that "countries like modern Japan and Israel are fully nationalistic states, but nobody accuses the Japanese of being extremists." Tyahnybok defined nationalism as love of one's homeland and drew a distinction from chauvinism and fascism which he defined as the superiority of one nation over another.

The party has often staged commemorations honouring Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Bandera lead the UPA in its struggle against the Soviets and later the Germans during World War II to establish an independent Ukrainian state but also engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing including the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. In a 2011 march organized by Svoboda to celebrate the World War II-era Waffen-SS Galicia Division, participants shouted "one race, one nation, one Fatherland."

The party views the dominating role of Ukraine's oligarchy as "devastating".[third-party source needed ] While oligarchs have typically played a major role in the funding of other Ukrainian parties, Svoboda claims to receive no financial support from oligarchs, but rather from Ukraine's small and medium-sized businesses.[third-party source needed ]

The party seeks to put a stop to immigration into Ukraine, and to make sure that only ethnic Ukrainians can be employed as civil servants.

On 16 February 2013, police in Ukraine opened a criminal case on charges of hooliganism against nationalist activists led by Svoboda Supreme Rada deputy Ihor Miroshnychenko for the dismantling of a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Okhtyrka, Sumy Oblast. Miroshnychenko said: "There is no place for Communist symbols and ideology in European Ukraine and if the authorities cannot get rid of them, we will do it ourselves." According to police, Miroshnychenko climbed the statue and put a rope around Lenin's figure, which was then pulled down by a truck.

Svoboda supports conservative values, and opposes abortion and gay rights. In 2012, Human Rights Watch condemned Svoboda for disrupting a gay rights rally, called "a Sabbath of 50 perverts" in an official statement by Svoboda.

Svoboda opposed legislation in 2013 that would have barred employers from discriminating against workers on the basis of their sexual orientation. Journalist David Stern describes the party as a "driving force" behind anti-gay politics in Ukraine, but states that many of its members may not share all its controversial positions.

In April 2013, three Svoboda MPs sponsored a bill banning abortions except in cases involving severe pathology, a medical risk to a woman's life, and rape when proven in court. Future Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, who has long opposed abortion, was one of the authors of the bill and responded to a question about what a pregnant woman should do if she failed to prove the rape in court by encouraging women to "lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, including refraining from drinking alcohol and being in controversial company."

Svoboda has been described as an anti-Semitic and sometimes a neo-Nazi party by some journalists, organizations that monitor hate speech, Jewish organizations, and political opponents.

Svoboda advisor Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn started a blog called "'Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre" in 2005, later changing "Joseph Goebbels" to "Ernst Jünger." Mykhalchyshyn wrote a book in 2010 citing works by Nazi theorists Ernst Röhm, Gregor Strasser and Goebbels. Elsewhere Mykhalchyshyn referred to the Holocaust as a "period of Light in history". The party has also relations with Andrey Sereda, the leader of the neo-Nazi band Komu Vnyz, who is invited to the organization's congresses.

In December 2012, the European Parliament expressed concern regarding Svoboda's growing support, recalling "that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles," and appealed "to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with" Svoboda. Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok stated in March 2013 that the EU warning against Svoboda's influence was the result of " Moscow agents working through a Bulgarian socialist MP". Referencing a similar resolution made by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Tyahnybok claimed it to be a result of a mud-slinging campaign by political opponents, stating: "When we did not have a parliamentary faction or normal channels for contacting influential groups in the European Union, a very negative image of Svoboda was created and in an extremely crude fashion." However, after speaking to European MP's he stated they "admitted that they had received completely different information about us." Tyahnybok furthermore stated that "spin doctors who are working against Svoboda" cover up the non-controversial points in the party's election programme "by promoting some clearly secondary issues through mass media outlets controlled by pro-government forces".

During a Party of Regions rally in Kyiv to counter the ongoing Euromaidan protests, MP Olena Bondarenko called Tyahnybok a "traitor" and one "who helps the Kremlin and Moscow." Her words were altered to read on her party's website that he was instead a "Nazi" and that "Nazis are not just disrespected, they are outlawed in Europe and throughout the civilized world".

Svoboda members have denied the party is anti-Semitic. Party leader Tyahnybok stated in November 2012 "Svoboda is not an anti-Semitic party, Svoboda is not a xenophobic party. Svoboda is not an anti-Russian party. Svoboda is not an anti-European party. Svoboda is simply and only a pro-Ukrainian party". In defense of these accusations, Tyahnybok has stated "I have repeatedly said that Svoboda is not an anti-Semitic organization. If you have any comments on our views, go to court. But nobody will, because everyone understands that even biased Ukrainian courts cannot pass any sentence against Svoboda because we do not violate Ukrainian laws." Tyahnybok says a criminal case was opened against him for promoting racial rights, but he managed to win all the court cases and protect his name.

The previous name of the party was an intentional reference to the Nazi Party in Germany, as "Social National" is a reference to "National Socialism", the ideology claimed by the Nazi Party.

According to Der Spiegel, "anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party's platform," which rejects certain minority and human rights. The paper writes that Svoboda's earlier "Social-National Party" title was an "intentional reference to Adolf Hitler's National Socialist party," and that in 2013 a Svoboda youth leader distributed Nazi propaganda written by Joseph Goebbels. According to Algemeiner Journal, "Svoboda supporters include among their heroes leaders of pro-Nazi World War II organizations known for their atrocities against Jews and Poles, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division."

Prominent Ukrainian journalist and president of TVi Channel Vitaly Portnikov defended Svoboda against criticism, as he noted he is often questioned for supporting party leader Oleh Tyahnybok despite himself being Jewish. Portnikov said, "I [stand with them] with great pleasure, because Oleh wants Ukraine to be part of the European Union" and that "presently Svoboda is acting in a very decent way, and I see no problem there. Right-wing parties function in every European country."

Ukrainian media associated with the Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine, and Russophile groups contributed to a trend of characterizing Svoboda as a "Nazi menace." Political analyst Olszański argued that voters from southern or eastern Ukraine, especially those who are poor, less educated, or attached to a "Soviet historical narrative," are hostile to nationalism, easily convinced that Svoboda is the modern analog of the Nazi invaders, and further that the Party of Regions is the only force capable of stopping a ' brown revenge'. According to political scientist Taras Kuzio, the label "nationalist" is "disastrous" in Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine and used as an epithet by political opponents.

Statements by political scientists

Political scientist Tadeusz A. Olszański writes that the social-nationalist ideology which Svoboda formerly adhered to has included "openly racist rhetoric" concerning 'white supremacy' since its establishment, and that comparisons with National Socialism are legitimized by its history.

Andreas Umland, a political scientist at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, has asserted in 2010 that "Svoboda was a racist party promoting explicitly ethnocentric and anti-Semitic ideas". He also believes that internally, Svoboda "is much more radical and xenophobic than what we see". However, Umland has also stated that he believes the party will continue to become more moderate over time, stating that "there's a belief that Svoboda will change, once in the Verkhovna Rada, and that they may become proper national democrats".

Olexiy Haran, also a political science professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, says "There is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding Svoboda" and that the party is not fascist, but radical.

Alexander J. Motyl contends that Svoboda is not fascist, neither in behaviour or in ideology, and that "they are far more like the Tea Party or right-wing Republicans than like fascists or neo-Nazis."

According to Anton Shekhovtsov, expert on radical parties in Europe, "The main peculiarity of the Ukrainian far right is that its main enemy is not immigrants or national minorities, as often happens with the EU- based far right, but the Kremlin".

Statements by Jewish organizations

Thirty members of the Israeli Knesset condemned the party in a signed letter addressed to the President of the European Parliament. In the letter the Israeli politicians accused Svoboda of "openly glorifying Nazi murder" and "Nazi war criminals". In May 2013 the World Jewish Congress labelled the party as " neo-Nazi" and called for European governments to ban them.

Ukraine's chief rabbi Yaakov Bleich said "Svoboda is an enigma in many ways," calling it "a right-wing, nationalist party with anti-Semitic elements in it." Vyacheslav A. Likhachev of the Eurasian Jewish Congress, said that the "party has a very anti-Semitic core in its ideology," and that it leads to "symbolic legitimization of neo-Nazis and anti-Semitic ideology in the eyes of society."

Member of parliament from the pro-presidential Party of Regions and president of the Jewish Committee of Ukraine, Oleksandr Feldman, criticized Svoboda as a "party which is notorious for regularly injecting anti-Semitism into their speeches and public pronouncements" and accused the party of "rallying behind this recognition and exploited mistrust of Jews to gain popularity among some in the lower class who painfully welcomed the chance to be a part of campaigns of hate". Feldman also writes that Svoboda has helped erode the shame associated with open expressions of anti-Semitism and other ethnic hatreds. Feldman has been an advocate for the Party of Regions and president Viktor Yanukovych, reportedly also funding the latter's public relations firm. During the Euromaidan protests, Feldman said the protests had degenerated into "ultra-nationalism and anti-Semitism," and called for opposition leaders Arseniy Yatseniuk and Vitali Klitschko to distance themselves from Svoboda. Four groups, including the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, said they have seen no upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks. "We call on Ukrainian citizens and foreign observers to remain calm and critically assess the panic-mongering statements in the media regarding anti-Semitism in the country," the groups said in a statement on the website of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.

In 2012 international human rights organization The Simon Wiesenthal Center placed Svoboda party leader Oleg Tyahnybok fifth in its list of the top 10 anti-Semites and haters of Israel, based on his previous comments regarding Jews in Ukraine.

Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok (in January 2011) has described the Azarov Government and the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych "a Kremlin colonial administration", referencing Svoboda's opposition to perceived Russian influences in Ukrainian politics.

Before the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election most of the radical points which were present on the Svoboda's original party platform vanished from the official election program that Svoboda filed with the Central Election Commission of Ukraine. In its place, a tamer, populist program focused on the impeachment of President Viktor Yanukovych and the renunciation of the 2010 Kharkiv agreements that let Russia's Black Sea Fleet stay in Crimea through 2042 was used. In its campaign for the 2008 Kyiv local elections the party also used less ethnic nationalist terms and it relied more on a strong anti-establishment, populist and anti- corruption rhetoric.

Svoboda's platform is called "Our Own Authorities, Our Own Property, Our Own Dignity, on Our Own God-Given Land." and includes the following points:

Ukraine-a presidential republic, head of state is the head of government

Lustration of state authority: publication of lists of all Soviet KGB agents that served or continue to serve in Ukraine, dismissal of such people as well as members of the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union from state leadership positions, replace them with graduates of the Ukrainian universities

Only those born in Ukraine can become Ukrainian citizens, with the exceptions for those who have lived in Ukraine for more than 15 years, know the Ukrainian language, culture and Ukrainian Constitution[69]

Renunciation[nb 2] of the 2010 Kharkiv agreements[69]

Impeachment of President Viktor Yanukovych[69]

Ban on abortion, except in cases of medical necessity, or rape;[69][164] and imprisonment from three to seven years for those who violate this ban[164]

Criminalization of public promotion of abortions or calls for abortions (by introducing a fine for doing so)[164]

The right to keep and bear arms[69]

Cancelling taxes on Ukrainian language products-films, music and literature-and instead imposing taxes on non-Ukrainian language products.[147] The proceeds obtained this way will be channeled into developing Ukrainian language products[147]

Nationalization of major enterprises,[147] greater state control of the banking system and a ban on privatization of land[69]

Ban on the import of the food products that are also produced inside Ukraine and import only exotic food that is not domestically grown[147]

The restoration of the Soviet practice of indicating ethnic origin on passports and birth certificates[43][54]

Proportional representation on executive bodies of ethnic Ukrainians, on the one hand, and national minorities, on the other[43][54][165]

Ban on adoptions by non-Ukrainians of Ukrainian children[54]

Preferential treatment for Ukrainian students in the allocation of dormitory places, and a series of similar changes to existing legal provisions[54]

The state is to implement a firm pro-family policy[2]

Svoboda also states in its programme that it is both possible and necessary to make Ukraine the " geopolitical centre of Europe". The European Union is not mentioned in the programme. According to Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok the programme is a worldview based on Christian values and the "rejection of various deviations".

Member of parliament Ihor Miroshnychenko asked the head of the Kyiv City State Administration Oleksandr Popov on 7 March 2013 to ban a march that was held the next day because he believed it would "contribute to promoting sexual orientation" and he further stated in his request " homosexuality provokes sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS". 8 March rally was in fact not an LGBT march but organized by feminist organizations.

In late January 2013 Svoboda urged Ukrainians to boycott revised Ukrainian history textbooks and to give up the teaching of the Russian language in school, calling Ukrainians "to categorically refuse to study in school the language of the occupier - Russian, as a further reliable means of the assimilation of Ukrainians". On 13 February 2014 following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Svoboda supported legislation abolishing the law on regional languages making Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels. This proposal was vetoed by acting President Oleksandr Turchynov.

Year

Popular vote

% of popular vote

Overall seats won

Seat change

Government

2002

did not participate

1

Extra-parliamentary

First Yatsenyuk government (2014)

2019[a]

315,530

2.15

5

Opposition

1. Oblast Council demands Svoboda Party be banned in Ukraine, Kyiv Post (12 May 2011)

2. Andrusechko, P. ^ Road of Tyahnybok towards Freedom. "Ukrayinsky zhurnal". Poznan, May 2009

3. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (2010). Britannica Book of the Year 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 478. ISBN 9781615353668.
"Ukraine publishes final polls results". The Voice of Russia. 13 November 2012.

4. Far right: ^

Kuzio, Taras (November-December 2010), "Populism in Ukraine in a Comparative European Context" (PDF), Problems of Post-Communism, M.E. Sharpe, 57 (6): 6, 15, doi:10.2753/ppc1075-8216570601, S2CID 154825950, Anti-Semitism only permeates Ukraine's far-right parties, such as Svoboda... Ukraine's economic nationalists are to be found in the extreme right (Svoboda) and centrist parties that propagate economic nationalism and economic protectionism.

Rudling, Per Anders (2012), "Anti-Semitism and the Extreme Right in Contemporary Ukraine", Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From Local to Transnational, Routledge, p. 200

Bojcun, Marko (2012), "The Socioeconomic and Political Outcomes of Global Financial Crisis in Ukraine", Socioeconomic Outcomes of the Global Financial Crisis: Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Case Studies, Routledge, p. 151

5. ^ Gordon, April (January 2020). "A New Eurasian Far Right Rising: Reflections on Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia" (PDF). freedomhouse.org. Freedom House.

6. ^ Ivaldi, Gilles (2012). "The Populist Radical Right in European Elections 1979-2009". In Uwe Backes; Patrick Moreau (eds.). The Extreme Right in Europe. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. p. 20. ISBN 978-3-525-36922-7.

7. Wodak, Ruth; KhosraviNik, Majid; Mral, Brigitte (2013). Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. p. 251. ISBN 9781780933436. KUN and Svoboda are also Russophobic and antisemitic

8. Fascist and antisemitic: ^

Likhachev, Viacheslav (September-October 2013). "Right-Wing Extremism on the Rise in Ukraine". Russian Politics and Law. 51 (5): 59-74. doi:10.2753/RUP1061-1940510503. S2CID 144614340.

Spyer, Jonathan (9 January 2014). "Kiev Showdown". The Jerusalem Post. The far-right, anti-Semitic Svoboda party of Oleh Tyahnybok is also in evidence in the square. The third organized element is the Batkivschnya (Fatherland) party, which is close to Timoshenko.

9. (in Ukrainian) Всеукраїнське об'єднання "Свобода", Database ASD
"Central Election Commission of Ukraine". Archived from the original on 19 February 2014.
Candidates list for Less words, Central Election Commission of Ukraine

10. Andrusechko, P. Way of Tyahnybok to Freedom. Poznan: "Ukrayinskyi zhurnal", May 2009

11. Party's history. Svoboda website.

12. ^ Elections of folk deputies of Ukraine on March 29, 1998 the Election programmes of political parties and electoral blocs Archived 4 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (1998)

13. ^ Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer (20 February 2014). "Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash". The New York Times.

14. Anton Shekhovtsov, ^ "From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda," in Media of Right-Wing Populism in Europe, eds. Wodak, Mral, and KhosraviNik (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 255.

15. Svoboda party - the new phenomenon on the Ukrainian right-wing scene, OSW Commentary, 5 July 2011

16. ^ Заява Організації „Патріот України" про розрив стосунків з ВО „Свобода" Archived 6 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, una-unso.inf, 18 December 2007

17. ^ Svoboda: The rise of Ukraine's ultra-nationalists, BBC News (26 December 2012)

18. Edyta M. Bojanowska (2007) "Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian And Russian Nationalism" ^ ISBN 0-674-02291-2, p. 55: "In the 'low', folksy world of the provincial narrators, a Russian is a moskal ("Muscovite")", a foreigner and an intruder, at best a carpetbagger, at worst a thief in league with the devil."

19. Winer, Stuart. Ukraine okays 'zhyd' slur for Jews, The Times of Israel, 19 December 2012.International Business Times, Svoboda: The Rising Spectre Of Neo-Nazism In The Ukraine, 27 December 2012.

20. ^ Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule by Karel C. Berkhoff, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008, ISBN 0674027183 (page 60)

21. (in Ukrainian) ^ ЦВК оприлюднила офіційні результати 1-го туру виборів, Gazeta.ua (25 January 2010)

22. ^ Tymoshenko's Looming Defeat: How Did She Make It Inevitable? Archived 11 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Serhiy Kudelia (29 January 2010)

23. Nationalist Svoboda scores election victories in western Ukraine, Kyiv Post (11 November 2010)
(in Ukrainian) Підсилення "Свободи" загрозою несвободи, BBC Ukrainian (4 November 2010)

24. On the move: Andreas Umland, Kyiv - Mohyla Academy, Kyiv Post (30 September 2010)

25. ^ Research, European Union Democracy Observatory).
Ukraine: Comprehensive Partnership for a Real Democracy, Center for International Private Enterprise, 2010
Ukrainians unhappy with domestic economic situation, their own lives, (12 September 2011)

26. (in Ukrainian) ^ Кого насправді "розкручує" влада? Факти проти міфів, Ukrayinska Pravda (14 June 2011)
Ukraine viewpoint: Novelist Andrey Kurkov, BBC News (13 January 2011)

27. ^ Governing Party Claims Victory in Ukraine Elections, The New York Times (28 October 2012)
Batkivschyna United Opposition, Svoboda agree on single-seat constituencies among their candidates, Kyiv Post (26 July 2012)

28. ^ Parliament passes law on parliamentary elections, Kyiv Post (17 November 2011)
If parliamentary elections were held next Sunday how would you vote? (recurrent, 2008-2010) Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Razumkov Centre
(in Ukrainian) Динаміка виборчих орієнтацій громадян України, Razumkov Centre (10 February 2011)
Electoral moods of the Ukrainian population: September 2011, Sociological group "RATING" (30 September 2011)
Ratings of parties, Sociological group "RATING"
Electoral moods of the Ukrainian population: February 2012 Archived 29 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Sociological group "RATING" (5 March 2012)

29. (in Ukrainian) ^ Proportional votes Archived 30 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Central Electoral Commission of Ukraine

30. ^ After counting all ballots at 116 foreign polling stations "Svoboda" wins in parliamentary elections in Ukraine Archived 2 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine, National Radio Company of Ukraine (29 October 2012)
No violations reported at Ukraine's overseas polling stations, ITAR-TASS (28 October 2012)

31. ^ United opposition, Svoboda sign coalition agreement, Klitschko absent at ceremony, Kyiv Post (19 October 2012)
Batkivschyna plans to cooperate with Svoboda in parliament, Kyiv Post (13 December 2012)

32. ^ Victoria Butenko, for CNN (13 December 2012). "New Ukraine parliament packs punches - literally - in first session". CNN.

33. ^ Interfax-Ukraine (25 December 2013). "Poll: Yanukovych to lose to opposition candidates in second round of presidential elections". .

34. ^ Maidan nominates Yatseniuk for prime minister, Interfax-Ukraine (26 February 2014)
Ukrainian parliament endorses new cabinet, Interfax-Ukraine (27 February 2014)

35. (in Ukrainian) ^ "Свобода" і європейські націоналісти: конфлікти є, війни нема "Svoboda" and European nationalists: conflicts are not the war, BBC Ukrainian (24 January 2013)
Europe's Far Right Is Embracing Putin, Business Insider (10 April 2014)
Oleh Tiahnybok withdraws Svoboda's membership within the Alliance of European National Movements Archived 21 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine

36. ^ Poroshenko Bloc to have greatest number of seats in parliament Archived 10 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Ukrainian Television and Radio (8 November 2014)
People's Front 0.33% ahead of Poroshenko Bloc with all ballots counted in Ukraine elections - CEC, Interfax-Ukraine (8 November 2014)
Poroshenko Bloc to get 132 seats in parliament - CEC, Interfax-Ukraine (8 November 2014)

37. ^ Why a 'Star Wars' Emperor Won Office in Ukraine, Bloomberg News (26 October 2015)
Exit Polls Show Ukraine Divided For, Against Poroshenko Rule, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (27 October 2015)
After Ukraine's Local Elections: Early Misinterpretations, Carnegie Europe (27 October 2015)
Poroshenko hobbles on, Politico Europe (26 October 2015)
Week's milestones. Elections to be continued, blackmail in Minsk, and emotional lustration, UNIAN (27 October 2015)

38. CEC counts 100 percent of vote in Ukraine's parliamentary elections, Ukrinform (26 July 2019)
(in Russian) Results of the extraordinary elections of the People's Deputies of Ukraine 2019, Ukrayinska Pravda (21 July 2019)

39. Osw commentary - issue 56, 04.07.2011, centre for eastern studies, 1ces cOMMeNTARy centre for eastern studies, Tadeusz A. Olszański(^ [1])

40. Motyl, Alexander J. (21 March 2014). "'Experts' on Ukraine". World Affairs Journal. Archived from the original on 22 March 2014.

41. ^ Announcement of the All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" about resignation from duties members of government and chair persons of regional administration. All-Ukrainian "Svoboda" website. 12 November 2014

42. The Extreme Right in Ukraine by Mridula Ghosh, Friedrich Ebert Foundation (October 2012)

43. ^
"Tiahnybok wants parliament to consider constitutional reform, ratify Rome Statute". Kyiv Post. 4 February 2014.

44. Norman Davies. (1996). ^ Europe: a History. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Aleksander V. Prusin. Ethnic Cleansing: Poles from Western Ukraine. In: Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen. Immigration and asylum: from 1900 to the present. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. 2005. pp. 204-205.
Timothy Snyder. The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. Yale University Press. 2003. pp. 169-170, 176
John Paul Himka. Interventions: Challenging the Myths of Twentieth-Century Ukrainian History. University of Alberta. 2011. p.4.
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. "The Ukrainian National Revolution" of 1941. Discourse and Practice of a Fascist Movement. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Vol. 12/No. 1 (Winter 2011). p. 83.

45. ^ Central and East European Politics:From Communism to Democracy by Sharon Wolchik and Jane Curry, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007, ISBN 978-0-7425-4068-2 (page 347)
Ukraine on its Way to Europe by Juliane Besters-Dilger, Peter Lang, 2009, ISBN 3-631-58889-5 (page 113)

46. (in Ukrainian) ^ Олег Тягнибок - єдиний кандидат у президенти України, який несе світоглядові бачення побудови української держави!, Parties official website (25 November 2009)

47. ^ Ukraine's Orange band loses its voice, BBC News ()
Monument to Lenin was opened with scandal, UNIAN (27 November 2009)
Police detain two persons who threw bottle of paint at Lenin monument in Kyiv, (27 November 2009)
Svoboda activists questioned due to explosion of monument to Stalin, (3 January 2010)

48. ^ Isachenkov (3 December 2013). "Main players in Ukraine's political drama". The New Zealand Herald. While Svoboda campaigns firmly for EU membership and Western values, their leaders, including Tyahnybok, have made anti-Semitic and racist remarks to protests by Jewish and other rights groups. The group also campaigns for strict conservative values and has called for banning abortions and spoken out against gay rights.

49. ^ Ghosh, Ghosh (19 February 2013). "Euromaidan: The Dark Shadows Of The Far Right In Ukraine Protests". International Business Times News. Moreover, Svoboda expresses extreme hostility towards homosexuals - party members once attacked and sprayed tear gas at the participants of a gay rights rally in the capital Kiev.

50. ^ "Ukraine shelves gay rights vote amid protests". Agence France Presse. 14 May 2013. The parliament of ex-Soviet Ukraine on Tuesday indefinitely postponed a vote on a bill that would have barred employers from rejecting workers based on their sexual orientation as hundreds of anti-gay activists protested outside. The European Union-backed legislation had been up for a vote on Tuesday after a strong bid by President Viktor Yanukovych's government - keen to eventually join the 27-nation bloc - to get its rights laws in line with Western standards. But the bill was opposed in parliament by the Communist Party and the nationalist Svoboda group that sees most of its support in Catholic Ukrainian-speaking regions in the west of the country.

51. ^ "Заява Організації "Патріот України" про розрив стосунків з ВО "Свобода"". Українська правда.

52. ^ "Скандальный жест: лидер группы "Кому вниз" вскинул руку "по-нацистски"". ukraine.segodnya.ua. 11 October 2011. Archived from the original on 16 October 2020.

53. ^
Ukrainian party picks xenophobic candidate Archived 9 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (25 May 2009)
Tiahnybok denies anti-Semitism in Svoboda, Kyiv Post (27 December 2012)

54. ^ Umland, Andreas; Shekhovtsov, Anton (September-October 2013). "Ultraright Party Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine and the Puzzle of the Electoral Marginalism of Ukrainian Ultranationalists in 1994-2009". Russian Politics and Law. 51 (5): 41. doi:10.2753/rup1061-1940510502. S2CID 144502924.

55. ^ Hoye, Bryce (18 March 2014). "'Will Ukraine survive Yanukovych?': Alexander Motyl provides theories on threat posed by Putin". The Manitoban.

56. ^ Ukraine's parliament to remain a rowdy place, Associated Press via Yahoo! News (28 October 2014)

57. ^ "Ukraine's parliament-appointed acting president says language law to stay effective". ITAR-TASS. 1 March 2014.

Olszański, Tadeusz A. (2011), Svoboda Party - The New Phenomenon on the Ukrainian Right-Wing Scene (PDF), OSW Commentary, Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), archived from the original (PDF) on 11 April 2014

Rudling, Per Anders (2013), "The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda" (PDF), Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text, Routledge, pp. 228-255

Shekhovtsov, Anton (2011), "The Creeping Resurgence of the Ukrainian Radical Right?: The Case of the Freedom Party", Europe-Asia Studies, 63 (2): 203-228, doi:10.1080/09668136.2011.547696, S2CID 155079439

Shekhovtsov, Anton (2013). From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda. Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. London/New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 249-263. ISBN 978-1-78093-343-6.

Umland, Andreas (2011), "Ukraine's Right-Wing Politics: Is the Genie out of the Bottle?", Open Democracy Russia and Beyond

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" ( Ukrainian: Всеукраїнське об'єднання "Свобода", Vseukrainske obiednannia "Svoboda"), referred to as Svoboda, is an ultranationalist political party in Ukraine. It has been led by Oleh Tyahnybok since 2004. It formed and officially registered as a political party in October 1995.

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