[It would be tragic if Ukraine defeated Russian neo-imperialism
only to yoke itself to Western neoliberalism. While being a Western
economic colony is certainly better than being absorbed into a new
Russian empire, neither outcome is worthy of the suffering Ukrainians
are now enduring.]
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UKRAINE’S TALE OF TWO COLONIZATIONS  
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Slavoj Žižek
August 30, 2022
Project Syndicate
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_ It would be tragic if Ukraine defeated Russian neo-imperialism only
to yoke itself to Western neoliberalism. While being a Western
economic colony is certainly better than being absorbed into a new
Russian empire, neither outcome is worthy of the suffering Ukrainians
are now enduring. _

, Daniel Leal / AFP via Getty Images

 

LJUBLJANA – As everyone knows, Volodymyr Zelensky played a Ukrainian
president in the television series "Servant of the People" before
becoming Ukraine’s president in real life, and that irony led many
not to take him seriously (as if a president who previously served in
the KGB is better). But less well known is the basic plot of the
series.

Zelensky played Vasily Petrovich Goloborodko, a schoolteacher whose
students record him ranting about corruption, share the video online
(where it goes viral), and then sign him up as a candidate in the
country’s next presidential election. Having unwittingly tapped into
Ukrainians’ widespread frustration over corruption, Goloborodko
wins, faces a steep learning curve in office, and eventually starts to
confront the country’s oligarchy from his new position of power.

The show’s depiction of Ukraine is apt. Of all the post-communist
countries in Eastern Europe, it was the hardest hit by economic
“shock therapy” (sweeping market reforms and privatization) in the
1990s. For three decades since independence, Ukrainian incomes
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remained below where they were in 1990. Corruption has been rampant,
and the courts have proven a farce.

As Luca Celada of _il manifesto _writes
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“the ‘conversion’ to capitalism has followed the usual pattern:
a class of oligarchs and a narrow elite have enriched themselves
disproportionately by despoiling the public sector with the complicity
of the political class.” Moreover, financial assistance from the
West has always been “strongly tied to reforms that Ukraine was
required to implement, all under the banner of fiscal restraint and
austerity,” further immiserating much of the population. Such is the
legacy of the capitalist West’s engagement with post-independence
Ukraine.

Meanwhile, my sources in Russia tell me that President Vladimir Putin
has assembled a group of Marxists to counsel him on how to present
Russia’s position in the developing world. One can find traces of
this influence in the speech
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August 16:

“The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines
of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of
countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign
development based on their own distinct identity, traditions, and
values. These objective processes are being opposed by the Western
globalist elites, who provoke chaos, fanning long-standing and new
conflicts and pursuing the so-called containment policy, which in fact
amounts to the subversion of any alternative, sovereign development
options.”

But, of course, two details spoil this “Marxist” critique. First,
sovereignty “based on their own distinct identity, traditions, and
values” implies that one should tolerate what the state is doing in
places like North Korea or Afghanistan. Yet that is completely out of
step with true leftist solidarity, which focuses squarely on
antagonisms within each “distinct identity” in order to build
bridges between struggling and oppressed groups across countries.

Second, Putin objects to “the subversion of any alternative,
sovereign development options,” even though that is exactly what he
is doing in Ukraine by seeking to deprive its people of
self-determination.

Putin is not alone in pushing this pseudo-Marxist line. In France, the
far-right leader Marine Le Pen now presents herself as the protector
of ordinary working people against multinational corporations, which
are said to be undermining national identities through the promotion
of multiculturalism and sexual depravity. In the United States, the
alt-right succeeds the old radical left with its calls to overthrow
the “deep state.” Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon
is a self-proclaimed “Leninist” who sees a coalition of the
alt-right and the radical left as the only way to end the reign of
financial and digital elites. (And, lest we forget the progenitor of
this model, Hitler led the
National _Socialist_ German _Workers’ _Party.)

More is at stake in Ukraine than many commentators seem to appreciate.
In a world beset by the effects of climate change, fertile land will
be an increasingly valuable asset. And if there is one thing Ukraine
has in abundance, it is chernozem (“black earth”), an
extraordinarily fertile soil with high concentrations of humus,
phosphoric acids, phosphorus, and ammonia. That is why US and Western
European agrobusiness firms have already bought up millions of
hectares [[link removed]] of
Ukraine’s farmland – with just ten private companies
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controlling most of it.

Well aware of the threat of dispossession, the Ukrainian government
imposed a moratorium
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land sales to foreigners 20 years ago. For years thereafter, the US
Department of State, the International Monetary Fund, and the World
Bank repeatedly called for this restriction to be removed. It was only
in 2021 that the Zelensky government, under immense pressure, finally
started allowing farmers to sell their land. The moratorium on sales
to foreigners remains in place, however, and Zelensky has said that
lifting it must be put to a national referendum, which would almost
certainly fail
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Nonetheless, the cruel irony is that, before Putin launched a war to
colonize Ukraine by force, there was some truth to the Russian
argument that Ukraine was becoming a Western economic colony. If the
conflict has any silver lining, it is that the neoliberal project has
been put on hold. Since war demands social mobilization and a
coordination of production, it offers Ukraine a unique chance both to
halt its expropriation by foreign corporate and financial entities and
to rid itself of oligarchic corruption.

In pursuing this opportunity, Ukrainians must bear in mind that it is
not enough simply to join the European Union and catch up to Western
living standards. Western democracy itself is now in deep crisis, with
the US veering toward ideological civil war, and Europe being
challenged by authoritarian spoilers from within its own ranks. More
immediately, if Ukraine can achieve a decisive military victory (as we
should all hope), it will find itself deeply indebted to the US and
the EU. Will it be able to resist even greater pressure to open itself
up to economic colonization by Western multinationals?

This struggle is already playing out beneath the surface of
Ukraine’s heroic resistance. It would be tragic if Ukraine defeated
Russian neo-imperialism only to yoke itself to Western neoliberalism.
To secure genuine freedom and independence, Ukraine must reinvent
itself. While being a Western economic colony is certainly better than
being absorbed into a new Russian empire, neither outcome is worthy of
the suffering Ukrainians are now enduring.

_SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate
School, is International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the
Humanities at the University of London and the author, most recently,
of Heaven in Disorder
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2021)._

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* Ukraine
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* Shock Doctrine
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