“Working-Class Heresies”: Ideology in Protests of Ukrainian Workers During the World Economic Crisis 2009–2012

Abstract

This article studies the ideas and ideologies publicly expressed by workers’ organizations (alternative trade unions and various support groups) in Ukraine during the world economic crisis. Studying such ideas allows insights into the extent to which the post-communist political-economic order has won the acceptance of important segments of society; about how the mobilized parts of the working class perceive the country’s political leaders, and about the actions and alliances pursued by various workers’ organizations against politicians and business groups. The study shows how workers’ and other marginal groups’ organizations depict reality in their public declarations so as to facilitate the emergence of a large alliance of have-nots on the basis of total rejection of Ukraine’s post-1991 political and economic establishment.

Keywords:

• post-communist Europe
• working class
• Ukraine

Notes

1. For a comparative analysis of several isolated protests at manufacturing plants during the economic crisis in Ukraine see Varga.

2. http://www.ikd.ru/node/8646, retrieved 24 October 2012.

3. The entire text can be found under asambleya.org/uk/node?page=7 (retrieved 5 October 2012).

4. The official arguments of the Assembly as to why “clans” rule over Ukraine relies on an equally arcane story to the one proposed by Vlada Narodu: according to a public document issued by the Assembly to explain territorial-administrative reform, world history is pretty much the product of a titanic clash between a Germanic-Slavic, Northern civilization (relying on decentralized administrative units) and a centralizing Roman, Byzantine and more broadly Southern centralizing and despotic tradition that has also infiltrated Ukraine.