Ukraine and the Empire of Capital

Yuliya Yurchenko

Description

Since 1991, nominally independent Ukraine has been in turmoil, with the Orange Revolution and the Maidan protests marking its most critical moments. Now, its borders are threatened and the civil unrest and armed conflict continue to destabilise the country. In order to understand these dramatic events, Yuliya Yurchenko looks to the country’s post-Soviet past in this ambitious analysis of contemporary Ukrainian political economy.



Providing distinctive and unexplored reflections on the origins of the conflict, Yurchenko unpacks the four central myths that underlie Ukraine's post-Soviet reality: the myth of transition, the myth of democracy, the myth of two Ukraines, and the myth of 'the other'. In doing so, she sheds light on the current intensification of class rivalries in Ukraine, the kleptocracy, resource wars and analyses existing and potential dangers of the rightwing shift in Ukraine's polity, stressing a historic opportunity for change.



Critiquing the concept of Ukraine as ‘transition space’, she provides a sweeping analysis which includes the wider neoliberal restructuring of global political economy since the 1970s, with particular focus on Ukraine's relations with the US, the EU and Russia. This is a book for those wanting to understand the current conflict as a dangerous product of neoliberalism, of the empire of capital.
List of Figures and Tables

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Preface

Map of Ukraine

1. Per Aspera ad Nebulae, or to Market Through a Hybrid Civil War: Survival Myths of Systemic Failure

2. Capitalist Antecedents in the Late USSR

3. Social Destruction and Kleptocratic Construction of the Early 1990s

4. Class Formation and Social Fragmentation

5. Neoliberal Kleptocracy, FDI and Transnational Capital

6. ‘Two Ukraines’, One ‘Family’ and Geopolitical Crossroads

7. The Bloody Winter and the ‘Gates of Europe’

8. Geopolitics, the Elusive ‘Other’ and the Nebulous Telos of Europe

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• International Relations
• Economic History
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• USSR
• Ucrania
• Post-war
• Orange Revolution
• Capital accumulation
• Civil disorder
• Geopolitics
• General officer
• Crimea
• Political economy
• Social class
• Soviet Union
• International Monetary Fund
• Economics
• Business
• General
• United States
• IMF
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Ukraine

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781786801821
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ukraine and the Empire of Capital
Ukraine and the Empire of Capital
From Marketisation to Armed Conflict
Yuliya Yurchenko
First published 2018 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Yuliya Yurchenko 2018
The right of Yuliya Yurchenko to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3738 8 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3737 1 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0181 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0183 8 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0182 1 EPUB eBook



This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
To the victims of capital
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Preface
Map of Ukraine
1. Per aspera ad nebulae or to market through a hybrid civil war: survival myths of systemic failure
2. Capitalist antecedents in the late USSR
3. Social destruction and kleptocratic construction of the early 1990s
4. Class formation and social fragmentation
5. Neoliberal kleptocracy, FDI and transnational capital
6. Two Ukraines , One Family , and geopolitical crossroads
7. The Bloody Winter and the Gates of Europe
8. Geopolitics, the elusive Other , and the nebulous telos of Europe
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
4.1 The coking coal-coke-metal and thermal coal-power-metal commodity chains
4.2 Results of the parliamentary elections of 2002: parties with percentage of votes and parliamentary seats allocation
4.3 Network visualisation of SOEs privatised in 2003 and 2004 and companies/oligarchs who became their owners
5.1 Interlocking company membership in the global policy groups and the foreign business lobby and interest groups in Ukraine
5.2 Top 500 corporations in the policy groups in Ukraine (the latter dataset was last updated by the author in December 2010
5.3 ERT members companies representation in the EU and US lobby groups in Ukraine
5.4 Company membership interlocks among four foreign policy groups in Ukraine
6.1 Largest mass media outlet (television channels, newspapers and radio stations) ownership in Ukraine by oligarchs and FIGs
6.2 The most influential political, economic and public persons interlocks of 1990-1996, 2003, 2004 and 2005
6.3 Parliamentary elections 2006 results and seat allocation
6.4 Parties and factions in the Verkhovna Rada per number of allocated seats after elections of 2007
6.5 Interlocks of the most influential people of Ukraine 1990-1996, 2010 and 2011
6.6 The dynamic of interlocks among the most influential people of Ukraine ratings, 1990-2011
6.7 Top 100 companies in Ukraine s market (2010) as per type and country of ownership
6.8 Ukrainian business groups corporate clusters share in Top 100 by numbers (2010)
7.1 State debt accumulation dynamic, billion dollars
7.2 Consolidated budget indicators, 2011-2016, UAH million
7.3 Gini, unemployment, and (hidden) income disproportionality, percentage; 1992-2015
8.1 Geographic structure of exports (goods), 1996-2016
8.2 Geographic structure of imports (goods), 1996-2016
TABLES
3.1 Murder cases associated with economic activity in Donetsk in the 1990s
4.1 Three main blocks of forces competing in the parliamentary elections 2002
4.2 The largest SEOs privatised in 2003-2004
5.1 Major investor subsidies in Special Economic Zones in Ukraine; established 1998-2000
6.1 Political parties preferences in 2003-2004
6.2 Gas distribution SOEs privatised in August-October 2012
8.1 Geographic structure of exports (goods), 1996-2016
8.2 Geographic structure of imports (goods), 1996-2016
Abbreviations
ACC
American Chamber of Commerce
CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
CPSU
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSTO
Collective Security Treaty Organization
CUSUR
Centre for US-Ukraine Relations
DCFTA
Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas
EBA
European Business Association
EBRD
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
ERT
European Round Table of Industrialists
ETG
Eural Trans Gas
FDI
Foreign direct investment
FIGs
Financial industrial groups
ICC
International Chamber of Commerce
IFIs
international financial institutions
IMF
International Monetary Fund ISD Industrial Union of Donbass ( )
JSCs
Joint Stock Companies
KIIS
Kyiv International Institute of Sociology
Maidan
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the main square of Kiev
maidan
social movements associated with the Orange Revolution and the Bloody winter
NDP
(Narodno-Democratychna Party) People s Democratic Party
NRU
(Narodnyy Rukh Ukrayiny) People s Movement of Ukraine
PDAs
Priority Development Areas
PIIGS
Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain
SALs
Structural adjustment loans
SAPs
Structural adjustment programmes
SCM
System Capital Management
SDPU(U)
Social-Democratic Party (United)
SEZs
Special Economic Zones
SOEs
State-owned enterprises
SSR
Soviet Socialist Republic
UAH
Ukrainian Hryvnia - the currency of Ukraine
URPP
Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs
USUBC
US-Ukraine Business Council
WB
World Bank
WIDER
The World Institute for Development Economic Research
WTO
World Trade Organization
YeESU
United Energy Systems of Ukraine (Yedyni Energetychni Systemy Ukrayiny)
YES
Yalta European Strategy
Acknowledgements
All those who helped or hindered in getting this book done over the years - you know who you are and what role you played in the process. If I have not thanked you yet in person, it is only because there has not yet been an opportunity to do so. Thank you to those who helped for your support, I am eternally grateful and humbled for having you in my life and for knowing you exist. And those who hindered, thank you too; without you I would not know the stretch of the limits of my own possible.
I want to thank the production team at Pluto and particularly my editor, David Shulman, for his continuous support and encouragement to tell the story I wanted to tell yet which was at first hidden behind the formalised structures I thought I had to follow yet always disliked. I am thankful to the reviewers of the book proposal and the text sample whose comments gave me ideas about improving the narrative. All the shortcomings of the final result are solely mine.
Preface
In 2004 I came to Sussex, UK, as an aspiring interpreter, willing to work in the sphere of politics to assist understanding between the leaders of the world, obviously full of naivet and boundless ambition. It seemed to me then that I could use my love of languages as contribution to address the unfairness and injustice in the world, and there was no shortage of those. I was politically apathetic, defeated, in a state of self-imposed intellectual coma that I felt was necessary to survive the lawlessness and civic impotence I d experienced growing up in Kuchma s Ukraine. I saw miners on hunger strike in tents in central Kyiv being fenced off so a Christmas tree could be put up and their discomforting sight would not bring down the spirit of the festive crowd. I heard a university lecturer reply to my complaining about this with her approval of the city administration s actions. My uni friends and I were taken out of classes on a few occasions to take part in pro-president demonstrations by orders from above , our lecturers being asked to oversee us go. We didn t go, we got lost en route to the demos, then we got into trouble with our department and that was also later reflected in our grades. All state institutions were subject to such pressure and demands to show loyalty or else . . .
In 2004, the year of the Orange Revolution, I came to Sussex where an introduction to the inspiring faculty and IR scholarship motivated me to dig deeper, seek more, demand empirics. The Orange Revolution that started and pathetically failed soon after left me full of frustrations but also hope that things can change; people can rise, en masse. I had thoughts I needed to express in my own words, not in words translated by me; I needed to find a language, a framework that would help explain what precisely is going so wrong. Political economy gave me that language and the necessary analytical tools.
Some ten years after the start of that journey to piece together the jigsaw of Ukraine s metamorphosis, the book has finally been shaped. The deep recession in which I envisaged the country would stagnate now also is tarnished by a hybrid civil armed conflict with a foreign element. Few expected this to happen in twenty-first-century Europe; mainly because too many forgot that the most resilient empire in modern history has not fallen with the fading of the European empires but has grown stronger - the empire of (transnationalising) capital. And where empires spread, blood is shed. Blood has been shed continuously across the globe in the name of struggles for further accumulation of capital. Until only recently it soaked the fringes, sprinkled the frontiers of empire; hidden away from the eyes of the gentrified Europeans in the piazzas lit by now solar-powered, sustainable lights. Frontiers however have a historically documented quality - they shift and shrink as empires expand. And as they do, they absorb the remaining commons and first Thomas Moore s sheep and by now private capital/TNCs/legal persons eat physical persons. By privatising state- and municipality-owned assets, by privatising public services, by polluting the global environmental commons, by