Ireland and Ukraine had similiar challenges in the period 1916 – 1923. Conor Kostick, Irish writer and historian based in Dublin and Vladyslav Starodubtsev, a social activist and a historian from Kyiv answer questions about the period and compare the experiences of the left in that era.

For Ukrainian readers, the discussion is published here.

Ireland and Ukraine 1: What was the challenge facing your respective nations?

CK: Ireland had been the first colony of the British Empire and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, British control over Ireland had been enforced with considerable brutality, not only in the repression the catholic religion of the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland, in making the use of the Irish language illegal, and in the exclusion of the majority from political power, but economically, Britain had suppressed the emergence of Irish industry in all but the northeast corner of the country, and, in the years 1847-53, had overseen an avoidable famine that reduced the Irish population through death and emigration from over 8m to 3m.

In 1916 the leading figures of the British Government were adamant that while Ireland might be allowed a level of ‘Home Rule’, it must not have independence. They were prepared to be ruthless in preventing a breakaway. At the height of the War of Independence, 1918-1921, Britain adopted a policy of ‘Reprisals’, burning towns and killing activists with a specially recruited fascistic force, the ‘Black and Tans’. Their thinking was expressed by a key figure, Sir Henry Wilson, who said that Britain must get a grip on Ireland or risk losing territory all across the empire. Towards the end of the war, Winston Churchill, a member of the government, had a plan drawn up for the re-occupation of Ireland by 100,000 troops.

An additional challenge was internal. The business elite of the northeast corner of Ireland, around Belfast, were running the largest shipyard in the world, along with associated industries like ropeworks and engineering. They were loyal to their source of wealth, the British Empire, and formed the Unionist Party as well as a mass-movement sectarian organisation, the Orange Order, to make sure that nationalists would not force them into an independent Ireland.

VS: Ukraine was a divided nation between two empires: Austria-Hungary and Russia. In the huge territories of Ukraine Ukrainians were the poorest strata of the population, denied education and self-governance, and being actively assimilated. The Ukrainian language was repressed, and Ukrainians only recently de jure were ‘freed’ from serfdom but in fact, still lived under not-so-different conditions of exploitation. At the same time, the Russian state in the East and the Polish elites tried to realize a settler-colonialist project. Urban centers were used to control the Ukrainian population. In 1919 (a few years after the revolution) Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was only 23% Ukrainian, and 42% Russian, with an absolute majority of the rural population being Ukrainians — with none of the access to education, representation, and power that the urban centers provide. Ukrainians were a peasant nation, without its landlord or capitalist classes, divided, and actively assimilated and colonized. Small political circles existed, mainly focused on cultural work — giving peasant education, learning the language, and spreading Ukrainian culture, but were actively persecuted. Ukrainian cooperative movement too was blooming and focused on ‘economic self-defense’ against poverty, as well as was engaged with Ukrainian culture and literacy organizations. First political parties were formed. The Austria-Hungarian dual monarchy was far more liberal than the Russian monarchy, so Ukrainians could realize their ambitions there at least semi-legally. That defined a more robust development of political life in the West. In 1890 in Western Ukraine — a Ukrainian Radical Party was formed, and in Central-Eastern Ukraine — a Revolutionary Ukrainian Party in 1900. Activists of those parties were active in cultural societies, co-operatives, and illegal trade union and peasant movements.

Ireland and Ukraine 2: What were the various strands of nationalist politics in the period?

CK: The main nationalist party before 1916 was the Irish Parliamentary Party. A party of landlords and business elites, it advocated a limited form of independence: local government powers within the empire. This party committed themselves to helping Britain win the Great War, in the hope of a reward afterwards.

More radical but much smaller, Sinn Féin was founded by Arthur Griffiths in 1905 and while not necessarily being in favour of a complete separation from the empire, it was popular for championing Irish culture in the face of British domination. A huge public enthusiasm to recreate the Irish language was shown by the turn-of-the-century with the Gaelic League growing to 100,000 members and similar numbers joining the Gaelic Athletic Association, to revive Irish sports. The backbone of these movements and Sinn Féin were the Catholic middle class and intellectuals.

Within Sinn Féin – and sharing its social base in the revived Irish nationalism of the middle class – were the secret society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The IRB planned to rise up against Britain as soon as the opportunity arose, which they believed was the case as a result of war. In this they were helped by the development of an Irish volunteer national army from 1913, which although largely followers of the IPP and therefore supporting Britain during the war, split with about 13,000 soldiers refusing to help Britain and instead preparing for a rising against the empire.

Then there was working-class nationalism, which although largely channeled behind either the IPP or Sinn Féin, did find a voice in James Connolly, Ireland’s most significant socialist leader.

The women’s movement, seeking votes for women and equality more generally, trusted to independence to secure their goals and – excepting the Unionist women of the north – a lot of key activists for independence were women members of Cumann na mBan, a movement along the lines of Sinn Féin but for women only.

VS: In Western Ukraine, the Ukrainian Radical Party, the first Ukrainian party in existence was formed.

Ukrainian Radical Party in its program declared: “We are striving to change the way of production following the achievements of scientific socialism, i.e. we want a collective organization of labor and collective ownership of the means of production” “In political affairs, we want full freedom of the person, speech, union and associations, conscience, provision for each person, without distinction of sexes, the most complete control on all issues of political life in matters that affect only that person; the autonomy of communities, municipalities, regions and provision of every nation with opportunities for the fullest cultural development”. The ideology of the Radical Party was comprised of non-marxist socialism, federalism (decentralization), feminism, constitutionalism, and romantic nationalism akin to the one expressed by Italian republicans such as Mazzini and Garibaldi. An important part of Radical Party appeal and ideology was oriented towards specific problems of peasant organization, which they learned from different agrarian movements in the world, including the Land League in Ireland. 

The second Ukrainian party was the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, which was formed in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine. It had a wide socialist appeal, but in the end, the social-democratic (Marxist) faction won the internal party struggle and kicked out all the non-marxist members. Thus, the party renamed itself to the Ukrainian Social-democratic Workers Party. It was a completely illegal underground party, it struggled both against the Russian Social-democratic Workers Party which was against Ukrainian national demands, peacefully fighting for the influence in Ukrainian land; and against the tsarist secret police, who constantly were developing new and more modern methods to fight against agitators. In 1905 USDWP had its first revolutionary experience, participating in revolutionary soviets and strikes. 

After the revolution of 1905 and following the reaction, the non-partisan Society of Ukrainian Progressives was formed to defend against the rising tide of Russian nationalism. The main members of society were moderate progressives and a minority of members of the Ukrainian Social-democratic Workers party 

All influential parties of the Ukrainian Revolution (with one prominent exception — still which was strongly connected to the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party — Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries) were formed from these two parties. 

Ukrainian Radical Party split into three: the Ukrainian Social-democratic Party — an austro-Marxist party; the Ukrainian Radical Party — a non-marxist Socialist Party, and the Ukrainian National-democratic Party — a progressive center-to-center-left national-democratic party. They become the leading parties of the revolution in the Western Ukraine. 

The Revolutionary Ukrainian Party accepted the Marxist platform and became USDWP. Non-marxist socialists in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine formed their party only in 1917, based on the so-called ‘narodnik’ and agrarian-socialist, federalist ideology. The new party was called Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, and it became the biggest party in Ukraine. The majority of the Society of Ukrainian Progressives formed a Socialist-Federalist Party — a moderate progressive group, socialist in name only, and similar to an ideology that later would be described in the US as “New Dealers”

Ireland and Ukraine 3: What role did the left play in the fight for independence? 

CK: The working class played a vital role in Ireland’s eventual part-escape from the empire. Four huge general strikes took place in this period and there were hundreds of factory occupations that, inspired by what they thought was happening in Russia, called themselves soviets and flew red flags. Thanks to mass boycotts, especially on the railways, Britain found it extremely difficult to govern Ireland or stamp down hard on the flying columns of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the volunteers who had become the official army of a national parliament that had set up in 1919 in defiance of Britain.

Had it been a straight battle between British forces plus Unionists against the IRA, Britain would have won easily, but with no one paying taxes to the empire, no one attending British courts, and boycotts refusing to deliver food or help the administration of the imperial administration, Ireland was able to sustain a guerilla struggle and ultimately force a serious negotiation upon the British government.

VS: Ukrainian Central Rada, a revolutionary provisional government formed in Russian-controlled Ukraine, was completely formed by the left-wing forces. The biggest part of the Rada were Soviet deputies and peasant union representatives, national minorities, and two Ukrainian parties that changed each other in the ‘ruling seat’: the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Ukrainian Social-democratic Worker’s Party. In the course of the revolution, by these forces, Ukrainian People’s Republic was formed

With your strength, will, and word, Ukrainians on Ukrainian land became free in thePeople’s Republic. The old dream of our parents, fighters for workers’ freedom and rights, came true (…)

We, the Ukrainian Central Rada, elected by congresses of peasants, workers and soldiers of Ukraine, we cannot stand for that, we will not support any wars, because the Ukrainian people want peace and the democratic peace should be as soon as possible (…)

At the same time, we call the citizenry of independent Ukraine, we call on the People’s Republic, to steadfastly stand guard over what has been gained [To defend] the will and rights of our people and to defend our destiny with all our might against all the enemies of the Peasant-Worker Independent Republic.

— 4th Universal of Ukrainian Central Rada

Against the Ukrainian People’s Republic Bolsheviks mounted imperialist aggression, starting the expansionist war while Ukrainians were agitating for ‘peace without occupation and contributions’. Where the Bolshevik forces came, they organized mass violence, and more often than not repression and centralization. Local Ukrainian Soviets became party-controlled and cooperatives nationalized, as something that posed a threat to the Leninist idea of one-party rule and the Russian state. 

Ukrainian socialists, students, cooperators, peasants, and workers of all sexes, organized massive resistance against the Bolshevik invasion but faced an unequal struggle, where they were left alone. 

Western Left organized campaigns against the Ukrainian People’s Republic, already idealizing Russian bolshevik-imperialist conquest of countless colonies of the Russian Empire, grain requisition from minorities, national-cultural and political repressions, and one-party dictatorship as a spread of a “socialist revolution”. Entente embargoed Ukraine, preventing supplies for civilians suffering from epidemic and hunger, as well as ammunition and shells for the army. Poland invaded Western Ukraine, and Romania moved to occupy the small Ukrainian region of Bukovyna. Even the French army organized a naval invasion in Crimea. Ukrainian Revolution was left alone against imperial and colonial forces from all sides, with nearly no weapons and ammunition, a state apparatus and army built from nothing in a matter of a year without proper officers or experienced government workers, with a complete lack of control of urban centers and lack of education. In such conditions, Ukraine showed deeply phenomenal resistance, and fought from 1917 until 1921, with Ukrainian left-wing forces, peasants, and workers organizing partisan movements and independent revolutionary republics even after the collapse of the Ukrainian People’s Republic itself.

Ireland and Ukraine 4: What different left traditions and parties were there at this time?

CK: The biggest left tradition active in Ireland was syndicalism. The Irish Transport and General Workers Union was modeled on the Industrial Workers of the World and at its peak had 100,000 members. Transport union organisers led mass strikes and ‘soviet’ takeovers. Unfortunately for the left, the two main figures in building the ITGWU were absent during these critical years. James Connolly had been executed following his leadership of the Easter Rising of 1916, a failed insurrection largely driven by the IRB. Jim Larkin, founder of the ITGWU had been jailed in America.

After the Russian Revolution a small Communist Party was created but it was tiny and nearly irrelevant.

There was a Labour Party, which was to become a reformist party of the Second International type and is mainstream in Europe today. During the war of independence, it wasn’t really distinguishable from the ITGWU, being mostly the ITGWU executive and others running for election in the name of Labour. In the north, mostly in Belfast, was the Independent Labour Party, a radical social democratic party that was quite influential until smashed by a unionist pogrom in 1921.

VS: The Ukrainian revolution didn’t have a right wing, as Ukrainian identity was seen as mostly the identity of the Left, while the Right was the one associated with Russian rule and monarchy. The governments of the Ukrainian People’s Republic were nearly always ⅘ Radical Socialist and ⅕ non-socialist, usually still in some way left or progressive. Thus, the biggest differences were between the factions of the Left.

In the Ukrainian People’s Republic (in Western Ukraine was separate Western Ukrainian People’s Republic) the biggest party was the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. From 1918 it adopted a Soviet\Syndicalist program and agitated for the creation of a democratic, independent Soviet Ukrainian republic. A smaller, but more intellectually influential was the Ukrainian Social-democratic Worker’s Party. Its radical wing supported the Soviet government type, while its moderate, democratic-socialist wing supported a Parliamentary socialist government, giving the Soviets a place to co-govern locally, but not to form a government solely on their basis. 

The influence of the Socialist-Federalist Party was minuscule, it never was even close to forming a government. 

Both the Ukrainian Social-democratic Worker’s Party (USDWP) and the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR) had their radical splits. UPSR split into UPSR (Borotbist faction) and UPSR (Central Current). Both UPSRs adopted the Soviet platform but differed concerning foreign policy towards Bolsheviks. Borotbists thought that there was still a possibility to convince the Bolsheviks to abandon their imperialist project, while Central Current was staunchly anti-Bolshevik. A similar split occurred with USDWP but also on the ground of the Soviet or Parliamentary system.

Ukrainian People’s Republic then was moving in a confusing direction — adopting a half-soviet, half-parliamentary government system. Its economy was nearly fully co-operative with a state sector acting on proto-Keynesian principles and with a substantial degree of worker’s control

Split parties tried to create a ‘Third center’ — a communist-independentist (Borotbists and radical social-democrats then renamed themselves to Ukrainian Communist parties) — fighting Bolsheviks, and being neutral towards their more moderate ex-party comrades. They even temporarily organized a union with the Anarchist militia of Makhno. Later, communist-independentists abandoned the idea of a “third center” and decided to join the Bolsheviks. However, that decision ended tragically. Their parties were dissolved, a huge majority of their membership repressed (usually not physically repressed. Such repressions against communist-independentists will follow later) as “nationalists” and only the most loyal to Bolsheviks were allowed to be incorporated into a one-party state.

At the same time, in the Russian Bolshevik party (there was no Ukrainian Bolshevik party) existed a Ukrainian communist-independentist faction. Its members were kicked from the party after comparing Lenin’s style of government with one of Louis XIV, “L’état c’est moi” and criticizing the Russian chauvinism of Bolshevik policies in Ukraine. 

In the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, the National Democratic Party formed a government, with the Radical Party being the second in command, and the Social-democratic Party as the third. As a government existed in a spirit of deliberation, a right-wing social-catholic party also was to co-govern, having 1% of the government seats (which was still a lot more than its real influence – which was less than 1%). Government forces were proportionally represented somewhere as 60\30\9\1. 60% of National-democrats, 30% of Socialist-Radicals, 9% of Social-democrats and 1% of Social-Catholics.

National Democrats in the process of Revolution moved their platform to the left. Being influenced by the British Labour Party, they changed their name to the Ukrainian People’s Labour Party and adopted a moderate-socialist program. 

What was different with Western Ukraine, as after the experience of semi-democratic rule, the idea of government based on Soviets was (and usually rightfully so) seen as less democratic than a parliamentary republic, and even the socialist Radicals discussed how to improve and make more robust socialist parliamentary republic, not the Soviet one. The idea of a Soviet republic was obscure, which provoked lengthy and sometimes heated discussions between Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian People’s Republic politicians. 

Ireland and Ukraine 5: Did the left succeed in being the voice of the national struggle? If not, why not?

CK: No, unfortunately it failed. It is sometimes argued that no particularly radical result could have come from those years, because rural Ireland was too conservative. It’s true that deeply conservative values came from some of the larger farmers. They set up a Farmers Freedom Force, modeled on the KKK in the US and the Farmers Party spokesperson said in parliament there were ‘not enough lamposts to hang the agitators from Liberty Hall’. They were met on the left, however, by very radical mass movements of poor farmers and land labourers, who around Waterford created a red army to counter them and who in the west took over large estates and worked them co-operatively. In general, there was no lack of daring and imaginative mass activities from the left at this time, such as general strikes and soviets e.g. the brief time Limerick City was run by workers.

I believe the main reason the left failed to at least come out of these years as a significant force in Ireland (and I think it was within the realms of possibility they could have come to power) is that right-wing social democracy – embodied by Labour leaders Wiliam O’Brien, Tom Foran, and Tom Johnson – set the agenda for the whole of the left and working class militants. They were particularly brilliant at sounding like out-and-out revolutionaries when they needed to and they had the credibility of being former comrades of James Connolly. It took years for the genuine revolutionaries to realise that these officials were more interested in preserving trade union assets and creating a role for Labour in a new Ireland than revolution. Right wing social democracy gifted the energy of the strikes and occupations to Sinn Féin, who used it to help win a limited form of self-rule at the cost of the partition of Ireland, with the north-east corner broken away to remain in the empire. Sinn Féin had become more conservative, with the southern elite moving over to it en mass when it was clear the Irish Parliamentary Party had been destroyed by its support for Britain in the war. Only a radical vision of Ireland could have appealed to northern workers in sufficient numbers to prevent the partition of Ireland. The Sinn Féin version was catholic and socially conservative and when that was all that was on offer, the Independent Labour Part of Northern Ireland were trapped (effectively, they had been betrayed by their comrades in the south settling for a partitioned and Sinn Féin-led Ireland).

VS: The Ukrainian left was the only real force to fight for national independence, but was facing overwhelming forces of imperialist countries or conflicting projects of national self-determination. Poland immediately waged a conquest against Ukrainian ethnic lands to realize the idea of “Greater Poland”, and Bolsheviks under Lenin became a regional counterrevolutionary force against indigenous socialists — in Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Far-East, facing numerous self-determined democratic socialist and progressive republics. The Western forces placed their bets on Poland and the Russian White Army and treated Ukrainians as harmful separatists and radicals. 

Russian right-liberal politician Milyukov even compared Ukrainians with “Sinn-Feinites bands”, saying that “independent from Russia Ukraine” is as unthinkable as “Independent from Britain Ireland”. 

Nonetheless, the struggle of Ukrainians did something that no one could imagine. The existence of Independent Ukraine now is a direct achievement of Ukrainian socialists then, who by immense sacrifices put Ukraine and the Ukrainian people on the map. Even Bolsheviks, who spoke of Ukraine as an “Eastern Russian province” in 1917, and Lenin, who agitated for centralism during that period, radically changed their position, facing massive peasant and workers’ rebellions of Ukrainian national movement, agreeing to create a pseudo-republic for Ukrainians and recognize us a separate nationality. Ukrainian People’s Republic became a rallying cry for all the future generations struggling for Ukrainian freedom, however, ravished of its “radical left-wing substance” by the next generations, who associated socialism with the Bolshevik project. 

Ireland and Ukraine 6: Having read each other’s answers, what do you think are the differences and similarities between the Irish left and the Ukrainian left 1916-1923?

CK: It seems to me that the similarities are that the same kind of left politics was active in both Ireland and Ukraine, except that in the Irish case there was a much bigger influence of syndicalism and less of anarchism (no equivalent to Nestor Makhno). Although both countries experienced tragedy and defeat for the left, a part of Ireland, 26 from 32 counties, did at least get concessions, which ultimately led to the country being fully independent from the empire by the mid 1930s. Perhaps the reason for this was the strength of the nationalist middle class? I get the impression they were much more coherent in Ireland, both culturally and politically. With the Land League of the 1880s leading to much greater land ownership by Irish farmers than by absentee imperial landlords; with an economy that allowed the service industry to thrive in the form of many small businesses; and with a cultural sense of identity stretching back centuries, the nationalist middle class was a substantial force and after the elite nationalists abandoned them and went all in for the Great War, they found their own voice. Poor farmers, teachers, white collar workers and small businesses provided a very strong network of support for Sinn Féin and a guerilla war waged by the IRA. This, plus the ungovernability of Ireland in the face of mass popular protests forced concessions from the empire in the form of a treaty that allowed limited self-government (the concessions were so limited that the national movement split over whether to accept them, with the elite scurrying back to power by being in favour of the treaty and the poorer middle class and working class losing out).

The other very interesting difference is that the Russian empire experienced a revolution that brought people to power who claimed to be socialists and to be fighting for a world transformation to a classless society where all would be equal. This very appealing vista seems to have split the left in Ukraine, because it took some time to appreciate that the Bolsheviks’ deeds were not matching their claims. In Ireland there was only one enemy and that enemy was very clear indeed. The British deployed a fascist-type of hastily created army, the Black and Tans, with a remit  to crush every nationalist action via the policy of reprisal. If the IRA burned down a barracks, the Black and Tans burned down a town. If the IRA killed a leading figure of the empire, the Black and Tans killed many activists during raids. Pretty much all of Ireland united in refusing supplies to these people, in not paying taxes to the empire, in not using imperial courts, etc. How much more complicated it must have been in Ukraine, when some of the armies approaching your town offered to side with the working class and help bring about global revolution. You would have to have had farsighted intuitions to out-maneuver the circling imperial powers as well as domestic enemies and the reds. I can imagine the debates among the left parties were extremely bitter

VS: It seems that Ireland was more lucky in terms of geography and facing the enemy — the exhausted British Empire. By sheer sacrifices and immense collaborative work Ireland won concessions that led to the Independence. It seems to me that the relatively compact geography of Ireland, together with one defined enemy that acted brutally were defining features of Irish victory. It was a great national struggle for independence. Unfortunately, conservative identity of big part of Irish population prevented mass left-wing movements to lead struggle for Independence. I think that there were real possibilities for the Left to lead the fight, but only if previous actions would manage to create a distinct and attractive Irish left-wing peasant identity. It is a great difference that in Ireland a big national coalition fought for its independence, while in Ukraine it was purely a left-wing coalition, I would say a radical left-wing coalition, which is quite huge difference, and highly affected strategy. From the similarities, Ukrainian and Irish socialists practically faced the same problems — of activities in peasant-majority land controlled by the empire, and that unique experience of peasant organization we can see only in Ireland, Ukraine, Mexico and a few more countries. The same mindset was also in creating cultural organization and in connecting national, democratic and left identities. Ukraine lacked organized syndicalism as a movement, as Ukraine didn’t develop a proper trade-union movement to that time.

Ireland and Ukraine 7: Are there lessons from this revolutionary period for today?

CK: The more the working class movement comes to the fore in Ireland, the more likely that the outstanding issues created by partition will be resolved in a united Ireland that northern people are glad to be part of. The more Ireland slides towards racism, anti-immigrant feelings, and the more it accepts the argument coming from the elite that luxuries like disability rights, a role for trade unions, a transition to sustainable agriculture, etc. are simply not affordable, the less it will appeal to workers in the north, whether catholic or protestant. Although it is likely we will soon see Sinn Féin in power north and south, it’s not clear that a ‘Border Poll’ – a vote for reunification – can be won with pro-market values as dominant in the south. 

VS: It is the memory of revolutionary transformations and radical democratic ideas that attract us. Experience of fighters for freedom and visions of the world that could be. The value of such visions for today are immense — they give us ground to stay on and give the platform to think from — and to develop, and create a better movement. I hope that experience of both revolutions would be better known. In Ukrainian, we have a few translations of James Connolly, including articles of Kostick himself. It means that there is something to learn and motivate. And Ukrainian People’s Republic of course is the dividing point of Ukrainian history, the strongest moment when Ukrainians stood up, it is remembered and immense part of our identity. And how the right-wing wouldn’t try to wash Ukrainian People’s Republic of all of its “radical socialism”, its legacy still lives on.

***

Conor Kostick is a founder member of Irish Left With Ukraine. Also on X here.

Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity is a book edited by Fred Leplat and Chris Ford, published by Resistance Books and Ukraine Solidarity campaign. It contains essays by Mick Antoniw, Welsh Labour MP; John-Paul Himka, history professor; Taras Bilous, activist for Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Yuliya Yurchenko activist for Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Oksana Dutchak, co-editor of Spilne/ Commons; Viktoriia Pihul, Ukrainian feminist; Nataliya Levytska, Deputy Chair of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine; Vitalii Dudin president of Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Bogdan Ferens, founder of the Social Democratic Platform; Eric Toussaint, spokesperson of the CADTM International; Ilya Budraitskis, activist in the Russian Socialist Movement; Niko Vorobyov, Russian-British freelance journalist; Gilbert Achcar, Lebanese socialist; Simon Pirani professor of modern languages and cultures; Stephen R. Shalom, editor of New Politics; and Dan La Botz, editor of New Politics.

Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity is an important publication that achieves two fundamental tasks: it amplifies the voices of Ukrainian socialists, feminists and trade unionists; and it refutes the arguments that many on the left internationally deploy to excuse their failure to support the Ukrainian resistance.

On 26 February 2023, Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity had its Irish book launch, hosted by Irish Left With Ukraine. The two speakers were Conor Kostick, a founding member of ILWU and Halyna Herasym, a Ukrainian sociologist currently based at UCD.

A full recording of the two speeches and the introduction by chair Noirin Greene, former SIPTU national equality officer can be watched below:

Transcript of the booklaunch Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity

Noirín Greene, former SIPTU national equality officer:

So the first person I want to introduce is Conor Kostick, who a lot of you already know. Conor is an Irish historian and writer living in Dublin. He the author of many lauded works of history and fiction and has received special recognition for his significant contribution to writing for children in Ireland. And I think that’s very admirable thing to do, Conor.

Conor was editor of the Socialist Worker in Ireland, twice chairperson of the Irish Writers Union and is a board member of the National Library of Ireland. As a historian, Conor’s awards include a gold medal from Trinity College, Dublin and fellowships from the Irish Research Council and the University of Nottingham. There’s also a great deal more, I’m seeing, Conor, but as I say, I’m only five minutes so I cut it all short. So thank you and I’ll ask Conor to give his address. Thank you.

Conor Kostick, novelist and historian:

I’m very glad to be asked to launch this book. I think it’s a really important book and it achieved two fundamentally important goals. One is it amplifies the voices coming from Ukraine, and two, it deals with the arguments that we’ve been facing since this war began. And just to go over those two points, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of hearing voices from Ukraine. The great failing of the left internationally, and we see it here in Ireland, is that it doesn’t start with the experience of people in Ukraine. Instead, they start from various different positions. They look at their political interests, their networks, and they come up with formulations about the situation in Ukraine that are back to front. And they end up, as we’ve seen recently, making all sorts of calls that have no bearing on what has actually happened in this last year.

They don’t think about, they don’t empathize with the experience of the people who are just living just like we were with the same nuances of politics, people struggling for a better world in against neoliberal agendas and so on. And suddenly bang! This massive, massive transformation of their lives, this deterioration of their lives, this horrific war. So I think to start with the experience of people in Ukraine means you don’t go as far wrong. And what this book does is it gives us the voice of the left in Ukraine. This is really important, because just like in Ireland, just like in any country, there’s a rich left tradition in Ukraine, there’s trade unionists, feminists, LGBTQ+ activists, socialists, anarchists, of course, every variation of political party that exists on the left elsewhere, exists in Ukraine. So why don’t we talk to them? Why don’t we start by saying, “What’s your experience? What do you want us to do? How can we show our solidarity with you?”

And when you start like that, you can very quickly arrive at the importance of arguing for Ukraine’s rights, self-determination, because nobody on the left Ukraine has the positions that we hear being articulated by the Irish Left. Here groups like People Before Profit, The Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Network, let alone the more sort of communist parties, they don’t make it clear that people of Ukraine have the right to resist. No, they say that, “yes, Ukraine has the right to self-determination, and they are against Putin (I will get to Putin), but they don’t have the right to take arms from the West. That’s a big mistake. They can’t have mines cleared by Irish trained people, because that’s a threat to Irish neutrality.” So they come up with these positions that are, I’ve described as a evasionist, because it’s fine to say, “We’re in favor of peace.” Everybody wants peace, but they won’t say that the peace now is going to involve occupation of Ukrainian territory.

It’s going to mean the crushing of the left. I mean, there’s no question that whenever Russia occupies territory, it smashes the left. There’s no trade union activity in Russian occupied area. The trade unions are banned. The activists like Taras says in his essay here, Taras Bilous of Social Movement, he had to make a decision about whether to stay in Kiev at the start. And people were saying to him, “If you stay, you’ll get killed,” because it looked like the Russians were going to take Kyiv. And they are killing the civilians, yes. But they’re also targeting activists. Russia has a very conservative agenda so much that really, I’ll just come into this in a minute, the real far right position on this war is to support Russia. And that’s happening internationally, because as Putin sees it, by having gay rights and so on, the West is needs putting in its place and he’s trying to stop this.

The stakes of this war are very high, because there’s a world historic momentum that we’ve also had in Ireland towards same-sex marriage and abortion and so on. And the far right internationally, the conservatives internationally, hate this. Victory for Putin is all about this kind of taking away of democracy, taking away civil rights. So what’s happening in Ukraine is absolutely vital. And Taras made the decision to stay. A lot of the socialists in Ukraine are right now in the front lines. An anarchist group I know are raising money to get night vision goggles. So they are physically putting themselves in the frontline. And as they say in the book, they’re very clear, they’re not doing this for NATO and they’re not doing this even for Zelensky, although they support the Zelensky government under these circumstances, they’re doing it because if Russia wins, all the space for left organizing is eradicated.

At least if Ukraine wins, they can then have a discussion about what post-war Ukraine looks like, how trade unionists can fight for their rights. But that fight won’t happen if they lose. When I’ve tried to raise this with the Irish Left, what I find is they cannot bring themselves to listen to the voices of the Ukrainian left. It’s like trying to bring two magnets of the same polarity together. They just slide away rather than connect. They never ever platform and address the positions of the Ukrainian left. And I’m not saying they have to agree with them. What’s really shocking about this current moment in history in Ireland is that the left here are silencing the left in Ukraine, I think deliberately so, because people like Irish Left in the Ukraine have made it clear that we’re in contact with the Ukrainian left, we would give them speakers. They don’t want to know, because as soon as they admit that there is a Ukrainian left that you should talk to and listen to, even if you disagree with them, then their arguments collapse.

I managed to get one of them online to start a bit of a discussion which he quickly ran away from. But he said, “The people you’re amplifying with this book, (and also who we’ve been in touch with since start of the war), are a terribly small minority.” It’s what he said. Now first of all, that’s simply not true. Social Movement is a modest enough organization. But here in this book we hear from trade unions representing millions of Ukrainian workers, really big representative movements, feminists representing thousands of activists. So it’s simply not true. But even if it were true, I asked him, “How many people in Ukraine support your position that Ukraine is right to have independence, Putin is wrong, but that they’re not allowed to have Western weapons?” Not one person supports that, because it’s idiotic. If Ukraine has the right to self-discrimination, then it has the right to arm, people have the right to get arms from wherever they can.

And there’s a long history of this, of independence movements gaining arms from wherever they can. Which brings me to another point. Let me just give you a quick example of what you can read about from this book. The kind of voice that deserves to be amplified, that deserves to be heard here and is being, I think, deliberately silenced by the Irish Left. This is from a feminist organization, an interview with Viktoriia Pihul. At the moment there are people going around and saying we want peace, which is fine, but the implicit message is that we’re willing to accept that Russia occupies the positions it’s got at the moment and the equivalent ‘peace now’ argument has happened with regards to feminism.

So we have a western feminist manifesto that calls for an end to war, but doesn’t say anything about whether Ukrainian women should fight for independence. This is Vuktoriia’s response, “We’ve seen many pacifist statements by western feminists, including their manifesto. In the face of war and daily deaths of our women and children we are critical of this position.” That’s a massive understatement. She must be seething at that position, but anyway. “In this context, I am part of a working group of Ukrainian feminists who have written the Ukrainian Feminist Manifesto. We call for support for Ukrainian women including our rights for armed resistance. What I mean here is succumbing to geopolitical reasoning and geopolitical thinking and withdrawing from the conflict by condemning all sides is not a workable position. We must clearly distinguish the rapist from the victim and help the victim to assert her right to exist and be a subject.” Terrific; short; powerful in just those few lines. That really makes the point more clearly than what I’ve been saying. We have to distinguish the rapists and the victims, it’s as simple as that.

The Russians are the rapists. Ukrainians are the victims. Which side are you on? Of course, you should be on the side of the victims. It’s shocking that there are so many people who cannot see it that simply and clearly and cannot recognize the experience of Ukrainians. And this has practical consequences of course, not only in that trade unions here and elsewhere have given practical solidarity to our fellow trade unionists and activists and feminists in Ukraine. But also even just for marches like the other day. The Irish Left With Ukraine, we can go to these marches, we have comradeship with the people on the marches. We can have a conversation with anybody on the marches. The rest of the Irish left, they don’t go to them, because their positions would just be treated with scorn at the best. So they’re cutting themselves off.

The Irish left, which should be so vibrantly engaged with Ukrainian left – and we’ve met people from Ukraine through these activities who are revolutionaries and Marxists and feminists of course ­– should all be comrades together and that’s not happening except thanks to Irish Left With Ukraine and through Irish trade unions. Many trade unions here have much better position than the local left parties. So that’s the side of the book that amplifies the voices from Ukraine. So you cannot underestimate how valuable that is. And then the other thing that the book does is go through many of the arguments we’ve been facing and deals with them at a sort of theoretical level, but also drawing on their experience. And I won’t go through all the arguments, but I just take on the one argument that the book helps us answer, which is the question of whether the conflict in Ukraine in an inter-imperialist war, a proxy war?

Because if it is, then we don’t want to get involved. We don’t want take sides. And that’s the position of People Before Profit, the Socialist Party and the others: “all countries have got the right to self-determination. But supporting Ukraine to defeat Russia would mean supporting America’s goals and therefore we’re not going actually give any practical support to the Ukrainian resistance.” So that’s the key argument and the book gives us really good answers. People have really looked at this. There’s a very good essay that points out really since 1900 there has not been a war anywhere in the world that has not had inter imperialist dynamics to it. Of course, if a small nation is rising up against American domination, Russia is interested in that. It weakens America, great. If a small nation is rising up against Russian domination, America’s interested in that. That’s happened throughout the whole of the twentieth century.

And in fact they don’t have this in the book, but we know from Ireland, we know from our history how it happened. In 1916 Germany shipped 20,000 rifles, a million rounds of ammunition on the Aud to help the rebels here. Roger Casement came in a U-boat. He was given a submarine from Germany. Should he not have had that submarine? Should we have not had those guns? Of course, Germany had an interest to weaken Britain. James Connolly knew that as soon as we take German weapons, there’s going to be the equivalent to People Before Profit saying, “It’s an imperialist war. You’re supporting Germany.” So he had a big banner made: we serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland. Yeah, we’ll take the guns, but we’re not serving the Kaiser. There’s no quid pro quo. And that’s the position of the left in Ukraine.

“Yeah, we’ll have your Apache helicopters and we’ll have your HIMARS, we’ll have all that. We need that. We absolutely need that. Otherwise, we could lose.” And, by the way, unfortunately it’s a very difficult military situation right now. They absolutely need this kind of equipment. It doesn’t mean we’re necessarily for NATO. And even if it did, the slogan, the right to self-determination of Ukraine, means nothing if they cannot choose to join NATO. I don’t want them join NATO. Taras Bilous doesn’t want to join NATO, the trade unionists, the feminists in here don’t want to join NATO. But if they choose to join NATO, that’s their choice.

If they don’t have a choice about joining NATO, they don’t have self-determination. So you cannot make your support conditional, you can’t say, “well I’m hesitant, because they might join NATO.” Tough luck. If you believe a country has a right to self-determination, then it has the right to make choices you don’t agree with. In Ireland we’ve had loads of referendum we’ve lost, the left has lost, but at least we’re making our own decisions about whether to be in Europe or not.

The left, if it loses the argument about NATO in Ukraine, it will nevertheless carry on arguing into the future. But it cannot make those arguments unless it’s free of Russian troops. So that’s the crucial point about these proxy wars. And we’ve seen from Vietnam where Russia and China armed the Vietnamese, but the left had no problem recognizing that the Vietnamese had the right to throw out the American supported government. And on the other side of the equation, some of you remember Solidarnosc, the independent trade union that flourished in Poland in 1980. Well the CIA got straight behind that, because they wanted to weaken Russia. Thatcher and Reagan feted the Solidarnosc leaders. It didn’t stop it being a genuine mass movement that socialists would support. So just because the inter imperialist powers are jockeying for position around a movement, that can’t let you determine what your position is. Your position has to start from the core principle. There is a rapist, there is a victim. Where am I standing? You start there and you can’t go wrong.

And yes of course, you’re going to see the other side jockeying for position, but the revolutionary victory, the resistance, the people’s struggle does more for making the world a better place than to let Russia win on the grounds that otherwise the US stands to gain.

And just finally just say something on the far right: the argument has been coming from Russia that Ukraine is fascist. And as this book makes absolutely clear, fascism is a problem in Ukraine, but it’s a diminishing one from its height in 2014. They got less than two and a half percent in the election in 2019. They got no parliamentary representatives elected and the left in Ukraine don’t swallow that excuse about the far right. They need independence and they will deal with the far right. That’s their problem to deal with.

And of course, the other side is easily more identifiable with its links to the far right. I mean, there are Russian activists who describe Putin as fascist and they might not be wrong as sort of neo-fascist. When you look at the big rallies the uncanny language that so echoes Hitler. But while there are nuances about what is a fascist movement and what is just a brutal dictatorship with state forces, the excuse about fascism should be laid to rest. There’s no justification for the evasion of Ukraine on those grounds.

So those are my takeaways from the book, really powerful important book. And the more it can get read, the better.

Noirín Greene:

Well done, Conor, for giving us an overview, your insight of what’s in this magnificent book. And I hope because of your address, it doesn’t put people off buying it. Don’t think you’ve read it all, because you are certainly haven’t. It’s a fabulous, fabulous inspirational book. I know my only job was to introduce the speakers, but digressing slightly, I loved your reference to the banner which was shown over Liberty Hall. We serve neither King nor Kaiser, and that wonderful photograph of the mobilization of the citizens army. We took their weapons, who took any support from wherever they can get it. Just before I go, I know Danigan will be summing up I think at the end. If I could just ask you, giving you notice, maybe you could say a little bit about the Irish Left with Ukraine and how people can join up and what you can do next.

I do want to say that I think the time, and I think Conor mentioned that all the references that are in this wonderful book, the time for the what aboutery. I’m allowed to say pissed off, aren’t I? [inaudible 00:20:07]. Really pissed off when you’re trying to have this discussion with people on, they call it the broad left about what is happening in Ukraine and how we should support the people there in Ukraine. And this is what aboutery goes on and on and the but word. And to be quite honest with you, I think a year later it’s over. I think people need to join up, sign up and do the right thing. I know most of the people and all of you, we are on the right side and that’s all that needs to be known. So anyways, that’s my little digression.

I’m not sure I’m supposed to do that. It gives me great pleasure to afford a very warm welcome to Halyna Herasym. I hope I pronounced all of that right and just a little tiny little bit of background on, because I am limited in time. Halyna move to Ireland in 2020 from her home, and I hope I’m right on this, in the western part of Ukraine to study for her PhD in UCD School of Sociology. And little did she know that when she left her family and friends behind to complete her studies in Ireland, that her beloved Ukraine would be ravished by the terror of the Russian invasion.

Halyna will tell us about her experiences as a Ukrainian living in Ireland. And I think Conor’s stressed that earlier, that’s the people that we really need to be listening to and her reaction to the news of the invasion by Russia, by living in Ireland and her shock and concerns for her family and friends left behind in Ukraine. Also, some of the harrowing stories, because I did listen to your interview with the Irish Times and I would recommend that you certainly try and do that. I think it’s on YouTube and she’s heard of just some of the atrocities that are unfolding every day. Wasn’t just at the start, it wasn’t just in the middle, it’s still going on that have been committed by Russian forces in the occupied territories in this illegal war. And I’m sure that you will have a lot more to tell us. So very hearty welcome to her. Thank you.

Halyna Herasym, Ukrainian socialist:

Thank you, Conor. I have some large shoes to fill now after your wonderful presentation. So I want to start with a little story of one of the authors of this book, Taras Bilous was mentioned by Conor. So he’s about my age. He is a Ukrainian left activist who was fighting for workers right, for the rights of women, for the rights of LGBTQ community for quite some time now. He’s an editor of Commons Journal, the left-wing Ukrainian Journal, and he has a very peculiar biography that I think highlights the struggle of Ukrainians very well. So Taras was born in [inaudible 00:23:10] region, which is the far, far eastern part of Ukraine. And once we were together at an event where we had to speak Russian. I myself was born in western part of Ukraine as Maria already told us and my Russian is not very good. For me it’s absolutely second, third language. I knew Polish at the time better than I knew Russian.

And I was like, “Whoops, I’m in trouble.” So I had to make my presentation in Russian. I was like, “Jesus, I probably have done not very good.” And then it was Taras’ turn and I never spoke to Taras in Russian obviously. We always communicated in Ukrainian and then it was his turn and I realized that my Russian is not the worst in that room. Taras’ accent was bad and it showed that he wasn’t very fluent in Russian. I think his biography and the way he stands for his conviction highlights that many divisions within Ukrainian society are not as they see it from the outside. Taras is a very sweet, very peaceful person, very patient for… I couldn’t be that patient to save my life, to be honest. He’s always very willing to go out of his way to have a genuine discussion, even with the people he knows that they would disagree with him and sometimes even with danger to himself.

So of all the people who would be patiently trying to persuade some activists on the right side, for instance, Taras would be the one who would be patient with talking to them. And he would be the last person that you would imagine taking up arms and going to fight in the battle. But when the Russian invasion began last year, Taras decided to stay and fight. So yeah, I think his biography and his character depicts very well the experiences of so many Ukrainian people. It depicts that the story of Ukrainian society is way more complicated than simplistic divisions like West and East Russian speakers, Ukrainian speakers and so on and so on and so on. When I read this book, I could really feel the frustration of another author Oksana [inaudible 00:25:46], also sociologist from Ukraine whose husband currently is fighting in war. They have two children and she had to flee, because they lived in Kiev.

Her husband is, he’s also from the western part of Ukraine and he is a wonderful, absolutely wonderful writer. I encourage you to look him up. I think some of his writing pieces were featured in New Yorker. His name’s [inaudible 00:26:13]. He’s an absolutely wonderful writer who spent quite some time sometime traveling, trying to learn about his home country, about Ukraine and writing reports about what he had seen. His book, [inaudible 00:26:29] Ukraine, is really inspiring and it tells those stories like the one of Taras about just some people living, going about their lives, being open and having discussions with him on his way, absolutely wonderfully. He also did participate, had been participating in left-wing politics for a long time, I think more than 10 years now in Ukraine and publishing his books. And Oksana in this book had written this article on 10 terrible leftist arguments about Ukraine.

And you can sense her frustration, you can sense her anger. And she even mentioned that hearing some of these arguments, she feels emotions that she’s ashamed of because these arguments make her so angry. And I can honestly relate to that, because unfortunately with many left-wing activists, and not only in Ireland, all around the world, you can feel like you’re invisible. So you are talking and you’re not being heard as a Ukrainian, it’s like this invisible veil comes between you and the person you are trying to talk to. And this lack of acknowledgement of your agency is honestly very frustrating sometimes because again, it is a very diminishing experience to be honest, when the people do not act as if you are there equal. They are trying to persuade you that, oh, this is all like a NATO rules or whatever. You are just are just being brainwashed.

I’m sorry people. I have a very good education. I am smart, adult human being. I’m capable of coming to my own conclusions about the situation and I do know quite a bit about the situation on the ground. So I can hear, I can feel Oksana’s frustration and I’m really delighted that right now I have an opportunity to present these Ukrainian voices and Oksana’s voice in particular here. In my research, I have two streams of research, one of them is I’m researching funeral culture in Ireland here. So I learned quite a bit about the Irish society, but the other stream of my research is dedicated to social movements in Ukraine. And I’m focusing on what I’m calling social dreaming. So social dreaming is these desires and dreams and visions of Ukrainian society, which are lived, which Ukrainian society is trying to make true through social participation, through political participation, through their everyday experience.

This is something that we have seen during your Madam protest in 2013, ’14. This is something we are seeing now society, regardless of their political views, left and right and centrist people and people who are not that interested in politics, to be honest. They’re coming together in order to realize the dream of just society with a rule of law where they have the right to decide for themselves what they’re doing. And I’ve been interviewing a lot of Ukrainian activists in the course of my research and that’s something I been amazed again, being Ukrainian, being a part of this social movement. But I still, I am amazed time and again with this determination, with this desire to make the world of your dreams where you can realize the justice, when you can see how your rights are coming to reality. I’m amazed by that determination, that feeling less willingness to work towards that, time and again.

And here in Ireland, I feel like this research on social dreaming is becoming for me more important than ever, because in Ukraine right now, and even before, we had so many predecessors who wanted to see that [inaudible 00:31:15] world, that world they’re envisioning for themselves. As Conor wonderfully mentioned, we have seen the solidarity movement in Poland. We have seen so many anti-colonial moments all around the globe. So in the course of my life and the life of my generations, we had so many people to look up to. So many people who were fighting to build that [inaudible 00:31:41] and more righteous world if you will. I had this discussion today that people of Ireland a 100 years were also so wonderfully mentioned by Conor. They didn’t have somebody to look up to. They had to envision their own future. They had to envision that world where they would have that right for self-determination to decide their own fate for themselves.

I think that what this book can provide for the world and for the left all over the world is this social dream, this opportunity to think out of this world, I don’t know, Cold War mindset. This opportunity to get out of that pattern of thinking America is bad, America is a superpower. We should be standing against everybody and everything America stands for and major stands for and so on and so forth. I think that this book and the voices of Ukrainian people in general can provide this opportunity for all the left all around the globe to see something new, to step outside of the box and to build more robust solidarities, which are not limited by political naming, by things that are using clever rhetorical figures to present themselves as if they’re just, or if they are promoting somebody’s rights. I think this is a very powerful opportunity to have this kind of thinking to go into this stream of social dreaming and political imagination and build this [inaudible 00:33:40] and more robust world where solidarity grows together. Thank you.

Noirín Greene:

Thank you, Halyna, that was very wonderful. Very colorful use of words in your vision as well. I particularly liked that we need to think outside the box, especially older people as well. And those that are in bureaucratic organizations or considered themselves the old left political people. I particularly liked where you said the social, socialist dream for not just the future of Ukraine, but for around the world. And I think of anybody is in any doubt as to how to get inspiration, again, I’m plugging it again, this book is just fabulous, because you have the feminist thinking in it. You have trade unionist thinking in it, and you have political with big peace and small peace and middle peace items and articles in this book. So I would again encourage you to do that.

Irish Left With Ukraine

This book launch was one of several events organised by Irish Left With Ukraine at the time of the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If you would like to get in touch with Irish Left With Ukraine, please email irishleftwithukraine@gmail.com.