[....]For centuries the Ukrainian people were under the boot of Russia’s czarist rulers to the north. The Ukrainian people won independence briefly during the first few years of the 1917 Russian Revolution, as V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought for a voluntary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that respected the Ukrainian people’s autonomy and the advance of the Ukrainian language and culture. After Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin led a bloody counterrevolution, reimposing Great Russian national chauvinism, along with brutal policies that led to what Ukrainians know as the Holodomor, where millions perished of starvation. An independent Ukraine only reemerged on the heels of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.In 2014 a popular mass Maidan uprising in Ukraine battled in the streets and overthrew the pro-Moscow regime of Viktor Yanukovych. Millions joined the political struggle, gaining in confidence as they fought Moscow’s plans to reimpose domination over the country. The struggle gave impetus to the national struggle of the Tatar people in Crimea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by seizing the Crimean Peninsula and backing a long, bloody proxy war by separatists in eastern Ukraine. That crisis has deepened a sense of Ukrainian national identity among working people across the country....
Without a course to organize independently of the exploiting class — at all levels — workers will run into insurmountable obstacles. Union officials urge workers to get Democrats elected, telling us we need “friends of labor” in office. But both parties rule for the bosses. This is the whole reason for the two party shell game, to keep us tethered to lesser-evil politics while guaranteeing profits for their capitalist masters.
