Colours of a revolution. Post-communist society, global capitalism and the Ukraine crisis (original) (raw)
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This research aims to analyze Russian foreign policy toward Ukraine from 2014 to 2022. It uses a dual logical plural approach from Marxist IR Theory. This approach emphasizes the importance of two systemic logics: capitalism and geopolitics. Since this approach is used in the foreign policy analysis realm, contextualization of the level analysis is needed. In this case, the dual logical plural approach proposes a distinctive description of these levels of analysis. International condition refers to the imperialism of the present world order, domestic factor refers to the development of state capitalism, and actors refer to the alliance of the political elite and capitalist class of state. Based on those distinctive features, this research concludes several crucial points. First, the expansionist economic maneuver of the European Union and the imperialist trick of the US played vital roles in affecting Russia's foreign policy toward Ukraine from 2014-2022. Second, the history of Russian capitalist development, which gave birth to the emergence of regressive Caesarism, also plays a significant role. Third, the development of Ukraine's capitalism and its class dynamics play a central role in navigating Russia or Western state's maneuvers. The dominance of Western Ukraine, which particularly articulates the interests of Ukraine's middle class and the Western state's geopolitical or economic interests, significantly forces Russia to change the nature of its policy from annexation to invasion.
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Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics: Ukraine in a Comparative Perspective
2018
The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please provide us with an informative abstract. This chapter analyses the framing of annexation of Crimea by Russian Federation in March 2014 and conflict in Eastern Ukraine during the spring of 2014 in newspapers of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The focus is in possible linkage of Crimean annexation to relations between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, including the possibility of similar annexation of Northern Kazakhstan, which has large Russian majority. Findings include that the amount of coverage is rather small in official, state-published or sponsored newspapers while in privately owned newspapers, the amount and spectrum of coverage is wider. It seems also that (especially in Kazakhstan) the Kazakh-language papers are less controlled by the officials and therefore more varied in their views than Russian-language papers. In some private newspapers, the similarities of Northern Kazakhstan and Crimea are discussed while the state media report only the official version that the annexation is against international law but that the people of Crimea also have right to organize a referendum. In Kyrgyzstan, the coverage has broadly the same pattern, Kyrgyzlanguage privately owned newspapers being the most varied and critical in their views towards Russian policy in Ukraine.
Ukraine is in a midst of a multilevel crisis that has economic, political, geopolitical, social, ethnic, cultural, religious and beyond dimensions. While the country has been having domestic problems as well as problems with foreign partners since its de jure independence, the hybrid civil armed conflict surprised analysts east, west, and centre. In this chapter I argue that transnational capitalism, neoliberal kleptocrats, dispossession of masses played a crucial role in making the armed conflict possible. (Chapter), in Crisis in the Post-Soviet Space: The Case of the Ukraine, by Felix Jaitner, Ed. Routledge. 2018.
Social crisis in contemporary Ukraine in search of a new narrative
Katowice : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego eBooks, 2018
on august 24, 2016, Ukraine celebrated the 25th anniversary of gaining independence. despite the fact that this country is very young, Ukrainians have existed as an ethnic group for many centuries. They lived on the territories that belonged to different countries at different times, including The russian Empire, poland, The austro-hungarian Empire, hungary, and romania. now, Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe with the area of 603,500 m 2 and population of approximately 42 million people. it would seem that a country which eventually received the long-awaited independence ought to have responsibility to build a strong united society in order to protect its sovereignty, but that did not happen in the 1990s. neither did it happen in the next decade. on the contrary, Ukraine faced several political and economic crises that, in turn, caused the societal crisis that continues to harm Ukraine and its people. in 1993, professor Volodymyr lanoviy, who was the Minister of Economy of Ukraine, wrote: "i am sick and tired of hearing political leaders say 'We are just beginning, we are trying to learn how to steer Ukraine out of political crisis'" (lanoviy 1993: 194). it turned out that this task has become too complicated for him and other politicians. instead of uniting the country by introducing a common narrative of national identity, several very different narratives started to emerge in the 1990s, and now they stand in the way of peaceful and stable development of Ukraine. at first, there were two major narratives-pro-Ukrainian and pro-Soviet (pro-russian). as lanoviy wrote in 1993, "in the West of Ukraine, the popularity of the national socialists is growing rapidly and the republicans are losing the confidence of the population. in the East of Ukraine, the authority and prestige of communism is on the rise" (lanoviy 1993: 194). it should not be surprising that such polarization of the Ukrainian society took place very shortly after the country had declared independence. in the academic literature, there have already been many studies proving that sharp economic declines have negative influence on people's preferences with regard to existing economic and political