As pressure in society increases and crisis deepens, the more attentively politicians watch the working class, which recently became noticeably more active. One cannot say that the working proletariat of Ukraine has already risen from knees, but it is a fact that it has started to wake up. In the last month alone there were massive protests by labor collectives in factories and mines in most regions of Ukraine – in Kherson (Kherson Machine Plant), Kharkov (“Malysheva” plant), Poltava (train factory), Vinnitsa (ball-bearing factory), Dnepropetrovsk (“Dnepropress” plant), Lvov (Lvov Bus Plant), Donetsk (“Kujbyshevskaja” mine),and in Lugansk area (mine “Izvestia”). If before the media ignored labor collectives and their problems, and the TV channels were filled with political beau monde and scandalous celebrity news, now it is the labor movement leaders that are increasingly occupying the news broadcasts. Now people all over the country cannot help but look at these new faces, some with hope, some with fear, and some with misunderstanding.
Now the workers are taking their first steps in politics – they are organizing protests to get economic changes, take over factories, form their own worker Councils and sometimes even go against high-placing officials. But even at this starting stage in their struggles, the leaders of worker unions are much more prospective and inspiring to the people than the glorified Ukrainian political party leaders who grew fat and corrupt from their parliament games. A fact that adds optimism is that these sprouts of class struggles have managed to survive and grow in the most difficult conditions present in modern Ukraine: the absence of labor unions and a Marxist communist party, with bourgeois propaganda polluting the brains of the working class, when the entire country is covered by the mould of pointless protests, organized by political parties who are worried for their ratings. One can see from all this that, since the workers were able to organize and advance in such conditions, the working class does have power and a future!
Now it is important to support those who, by virtue of circumstances, have appeared on the front lines of the struggle against the bourgeoisie. The workers of both the Kherson Machine Plant and the Lvov Bus Plant are now in a very complex situation - having courageously stood against the unjust customs and having refused to follow the order to “put everything on the stock exchange”, the workers of these factories have now brought the wraith of the bourgeois on themselves. During the hundreds of years that capitalism existed, the bourgeois has gathered a large arsenal of methods for suppressing the working class. Payoffs, intimidation, deceit, blackmailing, and the use of provokers and strike-breakers – anything and everything is used in order to weaken and ideologically decay the resisting working class. All of these methods are probably already in use against the workers of Kherson Machine Plant and the Lvov Bus Plant
Widespread actions for support and solidarity with the struggling workers – this is what is needed by the working class of Ukraine! But every working collective or labor union, who decide to morally or materially help their struggling comrades, must first take a look around – perhaps their situation is similar to the situation in Kherson, Lvov or Krasnyj Luch? Perhaps they should also form a Soviet of workers and join in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, to fight for fair customs and our country – a country of dictatorship of the proletariat.
Do not listen to compromisers who “warn” you against “hasty”, and even “dangerous” actions! Do not believe a word the current government says! Reject any opportunists who try to convince you to fight not for the people’s power and the country’s property, but for their own “intermediate” aims – their own victory during the next elections. Compromises can be, and are often, required. However, we must make sure that these compromises bring us closer to the victory of a socialist revolution. These compromises must not distill workers into musty voting booths aimed at milking the electorate, but bring an opportunity for them to join together during country-wide protests.
“The working class is a sleeping giant. When it awakes, it will move the world.”
Translated by Andrey Krasnov
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