I dedicate this text to all left-wing activists who spent their best efforts, risked their health, and sometimes their lives, blindly participating in the stormy events of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth years of this century. Although the final results of your participation are questionable, your experience is invaluable. After all, it is only from such trials and proper understanding of mistakes that one can build one’s movement forward through the darkness - towards communism.

Speaking about the Maidan from the point of view of left activists, it is worth noting two of its features.

First, it is unprecedented. Ukrainian leftists had not known such a massive and uncompromising popular protest, close to the definition of a “revolution”, since the collapse of the USSR. As one Zhytomyr anarchist said: “You know, we’re all just shocked right now.”

The second well-known feature of the Maidan was its national-patriotic bias, which greatly complicated any political work of the “new left”, as well as socio-economic issues on the Maidan in general. You can argue as much as you want about the role and place of the extreme right on the Maidan, but their protest activity is a fact. During the entire period of the Maidan, the Center for Social and Labor Research monitored protests from a sample of nationwide, [1]. No, this does not mean that the “new left”, especially in the regions, ignored the Maidan. As will be shown later, many left-wing activists actively participated in it. At the same time, such figures show that (at least in the mass media) the left was an inconspicuous mass in these protests, much, much smaller than the mass of extreme right-wing political forces.

And here the facts end. The debate of further interpretation in the direction of either justifying or denouncing the left’s participation in the Maidan widens the chasm between Ukrainian leftists — mainly between supporters and skeptics (haters) of the Maidan. Here I do not seek to support any of the parties, nor do I pretend to play the role of a conciliator between them. Rather, I will try to look at the gains and losses of the left’s participation in the Maidans, as well as the related activity of the left in the Anti-Maidans, little touched by both sides. My review will not refer to the capital, but rather to the regions. After all, there - in Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, Zhytomyr or Dnipropetrovsk - cases of left-wing activism on the Maidans were at least as significant as in Kyiv. Besides, the story of the largely unsuccessful participation of the left in the capital’s Maidan is already generally known and has been well mined in the polemic by both sides, while the regional Maidans are still almost unexplored.

First, based on the data from the monitoring of the Central Committee of the Russian Federation on the protests of the “new left” I will outline the background of the regional left, so that the background of the unfolding of the Maidan events is clear. Next, based on numerous interviews with local activists, I will try to understand their motivation to participate in the Maidan. Also, with the help of the information provided by them, I will try to reconstruct the main vicissitudes of this participation. Finally, at the end of the article, I will present my conclusions about the results of such participation and the future prospects of the left in the regions.

Prehistory

The regional (ie, non-Kyiv) left is, in fact, extremely complex. It combines different left groups in different regions and in different years is responsible for 40% to 60% of total protest actions of the “new left” across Ukraine. The Ukrainian left is small, so it is not surprising this regional half of the protests of left-wing groups are weakly visible in the mass media. Therefore, it is hardly possible to ascertain their significance in protest politics. Nevertheless, based on the monitoring data of protests, it is still possible to notice some features of their development over the years.

It is worth noting that even in 2010, a relatively large amount of “new left” activity was recorded in the regions — at least 53 protests (compared to 35 in Kyiv). Which is not surprising, because at that time there was a campaign in full swing in the regions against the introduction of payment to study in universities, as well as various labour union protests.

However, since we are interested here in the background for the unfolding of the later Maidan events, we will consider a more modern segment of protest history, from 2011 to 2013. During this period, two peaks of protest activity of the “new left” in the regions can be recorded — at the beginning of the period (2011) and at the end (2013). It was then that another mass wave of protests took place on educational and labour issues, respectively. In the first case, they were led by the “Direct Action” (Пряма дія - Pryama diya) trade union, which participated in almost half of all left-wing protests. It is interesting that its activity was well distributed regionally and was not limited to some leading cities: one or two protests about education took place in a number of regional centers. These were often protests by local anarchists who, in the wake of the success of Direct Action in Kyiv, sympathized with the trade union and self-organized into similar initiatives. The case of Zhytomyr is typical, where local anarchists under the influence of the activism they saw in Kyiv decided to start something similar: “I went to Direct Action actions, I really liked it - and when I returned to Zhytomyr, I suggested to my comrades to do something similar.”

But the wave of this success turned out to be temporary. In 2012, against the background of a general decline in the protest activity of the “new left” in the regions, there was a decline in the activity of “Direct Action” - only 7 protests, compared to 16 the previous year. Such stagnation can be explained by the words of those anarchists from Zhytomyr who, after several attempts, gave up on the idea of ​​activism based on the Direct Action model: “Well, almost no one, except ourselves, came to our rally. For some reason, students did not care about personal problems and did not want to self-organize.” In addition, it is worth considering that at this time the election campaign was going on in the country, which directed the emphasis of the conflicts in a party-politics direction and clearly did not favor the mainly non-parliamentary “new left”.

The second case of increasing protests of the “new left” in the regions happened in 2013. And it significantly exceeded both the education protest peak in 2011 and the previous record year of 2010: in 2013, the “new left” participated in at least 78 protests. This year, in addition to the well known protests in Kyiv, several equally important regional centers of leftist activism stand out. Most notable among these was Odesa, where left protests experienced positive growth dynamics since 2012 through the ambiguous tactics of the “united left” [2]. And although in 2013, according to activists, such tactics began to decline in Odesa, nevertheless, in terms of protests, that year saw the most significant result: at least 18 protests took place in the Odesa region with the combined participation of various left-wing groups. Also in 2013, Kharkiv stood out sharply, where local anarchists became active with protests — as did, separately, local Marxists. But the real suprise was Lviv Oblast with no less than 12 protests — while in the previous year there were no protests at all.

Such a sudden emergence from nowhere was thanks to the trade union “Protection of Labor” (захист праці - Zakhyst pratsi)- the flagship of the leftist protests of 2013 - which, in close connection with the “Autonomous Resistance”, organized most of its protest actions. This approach has been repeatedly criticized by other leftists for relying on dubious funding and maintaining very unclear relations with (left) nationalists. At the same time, one cannot fail to note its remarkable pragmatism as well as its favorable influence on some of these nationalists. This is how one activist of the “Autonomous Resistance” put it: “Our creed is always with the oppressed against the oppressors.” “Labor Protection” helped us a lot in its implementation. […] Intervening in conflicts, it is always more profitable to represent a trade union.”

Another protest flagship of 2013 — the Struggle (боротьба -Borotba) association — was also active, which caused similar conflicting responses. Borotba’s protests in 2013 were also quite pragmatic, focused on cooperation with active leaders of free trade unions. At the meeting in Kharkiv, one of the activists of Borotba told me that at that time they had branches in almost every region: “We have activists all over Ukraine. Including in Western Ukraine — Chernivtsi, Lviv, Rivne. Now they all come to us in Kharkiv.” I don’t know if it was just an exaggeration for the purpose of bragging, or if it was really something deliberately false, but the Borotba protests recorded by media monitoring in 2013 were remarkably fairly evenly distributed among at least six cities in the central, southern, and eastern regions of the country.

So, in 2013, the “new left” outside Kyiv returned to trade union focus. Only this time they were protests by classic labour unions with such characteristic protest themes as workers’ rights (at least 17) or delayed wages (at least 10). It cannot be said that, thanks to this, the left-wing protests gained some kind of hegemony or special visibility: in total, the share of “new leftists” was only 3% of all protests in Ukraine in 2013. At the same time, progress was evident: for the first time, thanks to the record protest activity, regional branches of the left stood out, certain networks of cooperation were formed. A difficult test awaited all this - the Maidan and subsequent political events that shook society.

Motivation

At the beginning of the Maidan, small ultranationalist groups and networks were the earliest to mobilise. Liberals were preaching “European values” and a free market with the EU. What made some leftists join the protest? Of course, they were not attracted to the ultranationalists or to the liberals. They were mainly attracted by the masses of disaffected people who took to the streets shortly after the first dispersal of the still “student” Euromaidan. Such motivation is hardly surprising for the “new left”. Although socio-economic issues are often among their protests, the topic of civil liberties is also close to them and was the second most common theme of the protests of the “new left” in the regions. And this is exactly the theme that Maidan acquired after the first dispersal. At that time, even some later of the best-known critics of the Maidan from Kharkiv’s “Borotba” or Odesa’s “Proty Techiya” were generally sympathetic to the Maidan process, and even participated in it.

What can we say about the anarchists - in fact, the leading left-wing enthusiasts of the Maidans - for whom the anti-authoritarian agenda is their “daily bread”. For example, Kharkiv anarchists believed that “Maidan, as if spontaneously, somehow gravitated towards freer expression, even libertarian ideas [...]”. Let’s take into account the fact that all these motives were multiplied by the unprecedented mass of the Maidans. The “new left” could hardly ignore this possibility of uniting with the masses on a previously unknown scale.

However, this more or less unanimous attitude began to change rapidly against the background of the rise of anti-communist hysteria in the Maidan. Attacks on left-wing activists and the fall of the Lenin monument in Kyiv led to the departure of some parts of the left in final skepticism towards the Maidan. It is interesting that the factors that led to this departure were concentrated in Kyiv, and old and new skeptics in Odesa and Kharkiv simply extrapolated the Kyiv situation to the local Maidans. This was quite strange, because the Kharkiv, Odesa, and other regional Maidans, where leftists could participate without hindrance, at that time were distinguished by somewhat greater liberalism [3] and the weakness of the far-right [4]. In addition, the left continued to lead the same local protests as before. In Lviv, the Maidan confrontation was a continuation of the long anti-Svoboda campaign of the Autonomous Resistance. For Dnipropetrovsk trade unionists, the local Maidan was a rally against the arbitrariness of the local authorities together with factory owners. Anarchists from the Kharkiv “Autonomous Workers’ Union” saw an opportunity for grassroots democracy in the “Maidan Forum” projects.

So, obviously, the change in the motivation of the new skeptics — as well as the subsequent sympathy of many of them for the Antimaidan — was influenced by a certain symbolic fetish. The opportunity to freely demonstrate their symbols (primarily communist) made some of them more favorable to joint actions with pro-Russian chauvinists, tolerant of everything Soviet, than with pro-Ukrainian chauvinists, who rejected all “communist” symbols: “Here, unlike the same Maidan, we could easily raise our red flag, and no one beat us for it.”

However, it cannot be said that the motivation of the leftists from the Maidan camp was devoid of fetishism. Yes, the realities of participation in it were such that only anarchist paraphernalia was tolerated (and even then not always) [5]. Anarchists could tell themselves that this reflected the anti-authoritarian character of the protest as they imagined it. However, the main fetish was not about symbols but about “self-organization.” This kind of self-justification happened in one way or another to all left-wing activists of the regional Maidans. For example, in Kharkiv: “In general, this structure made me wildly happy, because it was the first progressive structure in the Community of Independent States (CIS), which was really some kind of alternative to the state apparatus and government.” Or in Kremenchuk: “People are not for ideology, but for specific actions, for actions [...]. Therefore, they entered the Right Sector en masse, and then left it in the same way. Because there was nothing, only some rallies, pickets.”

Expressions of motivation of activists who participated are often reduced exclusively to the individual level. Like, “I just couldn’t stay away.” Because of this, the leftist identity of the activists dissolved into the general protest.

Thus, the motivation of the left to participate in Maidan or Anti-Maidan can generally be characterized as a kind of “populism” . Of course, there were constructive, pragmatic motives for participation. However, the opportunity to demonstrate one’s “correct” paraphernalia or the hope of conveying one’s “libertarian” call for self-organization, multiplied by the temptation of appealing to large protest masses, evidently served as the leading reference points for participation.

Participation

As already mentioned, the “coming to the people” of leftist groups in the regions mainly began to take place after the first crackdown on the Maidan in Kyiv. Activities of the regional left generally followed the wave-like dynamics of Kyiv events and finally resulted in the mass joining of groups of skeptics to Antimaidan.

But let’s start from the beginning. At the beginning the involvement of the left in the regional Maidan protests was quite spontaneous. Obviously, due to the individual level of motivation, activists did not care much about the creation of any organized platforms, and a certain confusion obscured a clear understanding of the situation, such as that of one activist from Odesa: “Yes, we went out individually at first, and already there [on the Maidan — ed. .] met among ourselves. […] And how else? It was rather a moral decision: I could not be indifferent to what was happening in the country.”

Undoubtedly, these shortcomings largely became decisive for the further prospects of the left in the local Maidans. The more operatively they lobbied and managed to organize themselves into certain initiatives, the more prominent places they occupied there in the future. One left-wing activist from Odesa, where the creation of similar left-wing platforms on the Maidan, in fact, never happened, explained it like this: “But from the very beginning, I suggested that all leftists go to the Maidan in an organized manner! Let’s go to the Maidan. I know its organizers, they are ready to cooperate with us, we just need to come as a group and seize the initiative.” On the contrary, the relatively prominent examples of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, or Lviv testify that the left was able to quickly reorient itself there and occupy a certain niche. This is what, for example, Dnipropetrovsk trade unionists say: “Well, after the dispersal of the Maidan in Kyiv, our activists started going out to our local Maidan one by one. But then we collectively decided to take part there, for trade union agitation, so to speak, and also for social demands. That’s how they created their own initiative, the Trade Union Sector.”

An important factor was the availability of free time among the activists, and their willingness to spend it on systematic work on the Maidan. Those initiatives that achieved the greatest success in regional Maidans (such as the Kharkiv anarchists or Lviv “autonomists”), for one reason or another, possessed “assets” (time and skills) which they were ready to contribute to the Maidan. [6], who were able to contribute as necessary - if necessary, every day. At this time, others (primarily Dnipropetrovsk trade unionists and Kharkiv Marxists) remained only “Sunday agitators”, weakly participating in the main life of the Maidan.

Let us also note the nature of these initiatives. Considering that it was impossible to use openly communist or even openly left-wing rhetoric on the Maidan, the initiatives of these leftist participants were rather socially oriented. They presented themselves publically as anarchists (Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Odesa), populists (Autonomous Resistance in Lviv) or trade unions (Trade Union Sector in Dnipropetrovsk). Their generally moderate demands stemmed from this social orientation, and could be described as mainly “radical social democracy” seasoned with anti-oligarchic and anti-authoritarian attacks [7]. There was radical left-wing stuff like the abolition of private property per se. After all, their neighbours on the Maidan would not have accepted this - liberals, far-rightists, average participants - and they all still had to somehow co-exist and, perhaps, cooperate. Kharkiv anarchists talked about such cautious tactics: “We did not unfurl the black flag on the Maidan right away. We spent a long time preparing, talking to people. And we did it only after they started to recognise us and consider us as their own on the Maidan.”

According to a similar scheme, the later activity of the Borotba group unfolded on the Anti-Maidan in Kharkiv. A short period of confusion during the anti-communist hysteria after the victory of the Maidan, a quick reorganization in Kharkiv and the creation, with the help of the assets gathered there, of perhaps the most powerful left-wing initiative during the entire protest period since the beginning of the Maidan: “After 50 armed members of C14 arrived in our office , took some property from there and destroyed it, we decided that we had nothing more to do in Kyiv. We went to the east where there were rallies in defense of monuments to Lenin. First, in Donetsk, but everything was somehow cloudy there. […] Then a week later, we were at the Antimaidan in Kharkiv, where we seized the initiative from local politicians.” Of course, a certain factor of success here was the generally greater tolerance of leftist symbols on the Antimaidan, as well as its lack of a single center (unlike Kyiv, where the opposition controlled the Maidan protest). However, an important role in this participation was also played by charismatic activists who almost continuously participated in protest events.

The demands of Borotba at Kharkiv’s Antimaidan were distinguished not by left-wing radicalism, but by the same adaptation to the public: “The first is the uniform distribution of the budget’s social components. That is, the so-called economic autonomy of the regions, so that the money does not go through the state budget for social expenses according to the final principle, but directly. […] But the main requirement is self-management. Federalization via self-government. This is also the opinion of the deputies, cultural self-determination and the Russian language. We also oppose privatization, militarization and nationalization of strategic enterprises. And oppose the reduction of the social sphere […]. The Soviet past also plays an important role in these protests. With them, we show people that you need to rely only on your own strength, and not look for easy solutions.” However, it would be fair to note that, in contrast to the leftists on the Maidan, the demands of Borotba were taken into account due to its prominent place on the Kharkiv Maidan. "It was not a simple individual distribution of leaflets or the organization of an agitation group, but a purposeful and regular propaganda of left-wing messages from the stage. After all, a number of progressive demands — such as the prohibition of the exploitation of other people’s labor or the priority of collective forms of ownership —were included in the declaration of the brainchild of the local Anti-Maidan of the Kharkiv People’s Republic. At the same time, we note that Borotba’s more successful penetration into cooperation with other (in particular, chauvinist) organizers of the Kharkiv Anti-Maidan contributed to the fact that the interaction between them became closer - and, therefore, even more controversial - than in the Maidan counterparts.

So we can see that the conditions for the participation of leftists in the regional Maidans and Anti-Maidans (at least in Kharkiv) did not differ much. In each case, they had to enter into compromises with the dominant right-wing forces, and these compromises were more beneficial to the rightists. So this whole game with failures and successes, in fact, took place on someone else’s playing field. The question we will now look at is - did the left manage to get something out of it?

The results

You can criticize the left-wing participants of Maidan or Anti-Maidan in many ways. But one of their achievements cannot be taken away: they found an opportunity to continue their activism in difficult conditions. Of course, all the activist accomplishments have not disappeared. Developed connections with collectives, worked out tactics of struggle, obtained media contacts — all this seemed to remain, but turned out to be completely unnecessary. When the emphasis was on the main goals of eliminating the “Family” or the “junta,” everything else became of secondary importance. It is notable that my left-wing interviewees never directly referred to this fact. Instead, when it came to other, pre- or post-Maidan forms of activity, they said something like “well, you know...”, referring to the irrelevance of these or other topics in modern conditions. And it was clear: the alternative to choosing between Maidan and Anti-Maidan (and chosing only one of them) would be to chose completely inactivity and marginality. Of course, under the given conditions, such an option would not necessarily be so terrible in principle, if it offered an opportunity for replacement and renovation of a core of action-oriented activists. Instead, the “cunning ideology of inaction,” as one activist described it, was based on the rather controversial elevation of the importance of pure intellectual reflection. And this at a time when many left-wing groups had committed resources to building infrastructure oriented to the Maidan or Anti-Maidan.

The main achievements of the left were in organizational infrastructures. Experience itself is an asset, so is the ability to mobilise finances and donations, social connections with public and liberal activists, and fame among the mass media — it was on these points that each of the described leftist groups on the Maidan had a significant breakthrough, which took them to a new level. Thus, in Zhytomyr, a completely formless gathering of local intellectuals and subculturalists during the Maidan took shape into a coherent organizational group. The fairly marginal group of AST-Kharkiv became visible and respected among the liberal public of the city, and also secured considerable resources. After all, Autonomous Resistance, already quite active in the socio-economic plan (let’s remember the protests of “Protection of Labor” in Lviv) and with a good organizational infrastructure (social center, gym, visited web resources), reached a new level of local and even all-Ukrainian struggle. Its activists, deftly using “populist” rhetoric, managed to hold at least ten protest actions in Lviv during the Maidan - among them two high-profile events, the occupation of the Lviv Regional State Administration and a successful anti-developer campaign (during the Maidan!). As a result, they attracted almost total publicity in Lviv, repeated exposure to the national media, new anti-Svoboda allies among public activists and expansion to other regions.

The same applies to Antimaidan. The dynamics of Borotba in Kharkiv in general somewhat resembled Autonomous Resistance in Lviv. The flagship of last year’s leftist protests with a good organizational infrastructure, it has focused all its efforts on the current protest agitation. But in the scattered Anti-Maidan of Kharkov, other partcipants relied on Borotba for its technical capacity and resources: “Until we came to Kharkov with our equipment, they didn’t even have loudspeakers at rallies!”. Undoubtedly, this contributed to more significant results. “We have about two hundred active people,” say Borotba activists, perhaps exaggerating a little. But it must be admitted that they gathered thousands of demonstrators almost every day during the peak period of the Anti-Maidan, with a core of several hundred supporters that they somehow gained while working in Kharkiv,

Of course, there were also examples of unsuccessful attempts to participate. For example, in Odessa. “Labor Protection” half-disintegrated towards the end of 2013, never having managed to organize the workers at the enterprises into any permanent groups, and even without rallying around itself enough socially critical activists (as in Lviv). The local split of Odesa leftists on the issue of Maidan/Anti-Maidan, which is typical for the Ukrainian left, was simply based on the remnants of the former Odesa “left unity”. As a result, no infrastructural leap ever took place, and everything remained at the level of spontaneous participation. [8]

The main problem was not so much the organization of effective participation as the further preservation of this result. In this context, the example of the Kremenchug group of anarchists, militant activists from the Maidan, who after their triumph, together with other local activists, went to their homes to “restore order” is illustrative in this context. There, they managed to conduct a successful campaign against a mining and processing plant that was polluting the environment, as well as a number of smaller protests (for example, against poachers). But all these achievements of the populist movement were gradually swept away by the local “Right Sector”. Of course, local anarchists tried to oppose the “Right Sector”, but they simply lacked the resources and the skills. As a result, rumors began to spread about them as “shaky”, “fags”, “Chechens”, and soon they were kicked out of the movement.

Other left-wing groups faced similar problems of failure to capitalise on results. In particular, “Autonomous Resistance” in the wake of the Maidan held another series of protest actions in Lviv with market and polyclinic workers and public activists, initiated its hundredth self-defense initiative and movement for the local residents of the city. Some of them achieved local victories, but in general they gave almost nothing to the “autonomists” themselves. “We are somewhere where we were before,” one Autonomous Resistance activist answered me when asked about their achievements three months after the Maidan. The same can be observed in Kharkiv, where against the background of the bright results of the anarchists on the Maidan or the fighters on the Anti-Maidan, the dynamics of the current left-wing activity looks rather dim. Repressive actions of the authorities against the most active representatives of Autonomous Resistance and Borotba look especially threatening [9]. Due to the active persecution of their activists under the pretext of separatism, the “Borotbists” were generally forced to curtail their activities in Ukraine, so their vision of their immediate prospects is not too rosy: “The main thing is that we don’t transplant everyone.”

All this leads us to an important conclusion. The participation of the left in Maidan and Anti-Maidan was not a simple gaining of advantages with this or that success. It was a game of anticipation. And although some of them showed good results, in the end they all were still beaten. They were beaten by opponents from the right st camp. Thos enemies had a huge head start in the form of the nationalist leanings of the Maidan or Anti-Maidan, which they took advantage of. Meanwhile, the leftists have at best turned into regional oppositionists, nothing more. And now they are suffering inevitable pressures that weaken and constrain them.

Prospects

But all this does not mean that all the efforts spent were in vain, and further left-wing political action is impossible.

The case of Zhytomyr is notable. There, a newly organized group of local anarchists encountered active resistance to the “March of Patriots” during their May Day march. However, this resistance was overcome by enlisting the support of the moderate forces of the Maidan — and for this the anarchists had to take a couple of state flags and adjust their public discourse to make very explicit their criticism of Russian imperialism. [10] We observe something similar in Lviv. Here, “Svoboda” through its media is actively trying to discredit the “Autonomous Resistance”, conspiratorially accusing it of connections with Medvedchuk, Russia, etc. The pressure is considerable - in addition, the already mentioned repressions from the city’s sub-Svobodov state apparatus have begun. But they are unable to break the opposition of the “autonomists”: local public activists who are convinced of their honesty and patriotism and, conversely, the corruption of “Svoboda” stand up for Autonomous Resistance.

With the correct strategi choices, and here and there accepting the pragmatic need to ostentatious shows of patriotism, the “new left” may well drive a wedge between the extreme right and the liberals. And thereby save itself from the otherwise almost inevitable political death.

But, of course, such a technique is only a “saving straw”, nothing more. For the left to make real progress, it is necessary to rely on its own efforts. As this survey of leftists in the regions has shown, it is enough to get into a favorable environment of grassroots protest mobilization of the type of (Anti)Maidans [11]. We also saw that the left’s participation in such environments was poorly thought out strategically and even tactically. Sober calculation was replaced by “populist” motivation in accordance with the orientation towards the fetish of [leftist/Soviet] paraphernalia or self-organization. All this led to the fact that the left activists were more likely to stumble upon an unexpected success a[than to win success as a result of careful strategic efforts] and did not even have time to think about their success when it was already slipping away. What is even worse, due to the constant need to conform in front of a patriotic audience, leftist “populists” from different camps quarreled among themselves. And all this was happening against the background of the colossal development of right-wing hegemony.

In a word, the situation that has developed for the left is extremely unsatisfactory and requires some kind of operative reaction. And here, the left would need a radically different approach, an approach to activism as an experiment. In other words, every political action requires the formulation of a hypothesis that can be tested during reflection on the results of the action, i.e. adopt or reject the type of action carried out in view of its effectiveness in experimental conditions. It is on such bricks that fruitful tactics and strategy of the left can be built little by little. After all, creating new “united lefts” or fostering socio-economic flagships of protest is all good. But only when there is a clear, verified understanding, how and for what. And now it just doesn’t exist. So all the good initiatives to create new left-wing political entities risk to be elusive wandering in the dark, or the creation of unnatural combinations. On the other hand, breaking away from “populism” and fetishes, I would also like to warn against the polar position - the rejection of activism in favor of full dedication to thinking-and-rethinking. This kind of “reflection” among the leftists is constantly abundant - and the passive skeptics of the Maidan are a vivid confirmation of this. But, alienated from the immediate empirical field, they usually base their interpretations on speculative judgments on a limited set of facts. In addition, without practical actions in the political plane, these “reflections” themselves turn into small political practices. Only much fancier, since they cannot lead to anything except another verbal battle on the internet.

Instead, small but adequate research groups of activists, oriented to the practical implementation of their searches, could bring a lot of revitalization to this “left swamp” of myopic practitioners and self-obsessed skeptics. These groups could begin to lay a good foundation for a powerful leftist movement in Ukraine. For this they would not need any significant resources. At first it is enough to walk and observe. Observe what? First of all, left actions, but if possible also other interesting socially oriented events. And draw analytical conclusions from all this. Becoming such a researcher is not difficult at all. You do not need to get diplomas or join any organizations. You just need to approach your own activism in a balanced way, free of the usual patterns and fetishes. Think about why the last move was marginally successful, or why the target audience (if there was one at all) never understood our ideas. And in general, what kind of ideas are these. And so — we would have a study that remains only to be reasonably discussed and compared with other thematic information among the same researchers. Only in this way, when the activism of the left turns from following patterns into a constant experiment, will its prospects cease to be dark tracks and become brightly lit roads.

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Taras Salamanyuk

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