I rarely post about current events, so I haven’t mentioned the stand-off in the Ukraine. But I thought some factoids might be enlightening. Since I don’t write much about the Ukraine or Russia, I’ve drawn heavily from newspaper articles published in previously “nonaligned” nations.  Feel free to post your comments. That said, let’s get started.

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union left the Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia with territorial disputes, ethnic and linguistic clashes,  disfunctional economic and trade patterns, and strategic dilemmas.

The Ukraine had a central position in the former USSR. Leading Soviet political figures were Ukrainian, its Donbass region was an industrial hub, and the Slav “big three” that ended the USSR consisted of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

After Soviet disintegration, the Ukraine continued economically on Russian lines, dominated by oligarchs:

• the oligarchs are Ukrainian
• Ukrainian policy is independent
• the Ukraine gained World Trade Organization (WTO) membership in 2008
• the country is dependent on Russia for energy
• Russian gas pipelines to Europe pass through the Ukraine
• Russia has few alternative routes to Europe.

Ukrainian Independence

The Ukraine has been independent for 22 years and has worked toward embracing all its regions and citizens:

• Ukrainian governments have straddled ethnic and geographic divisions
• conflicts between the Russians and Ukrainians who share the country have been rare.

East Ukraine is politically, religiously, linguistically, culturally, and economically close to Russia:

• 25% of Ukraine’s 45 million population are ethnic Russians
• Russian is widely spoken in parts of the east and south
• in some ares, including Crimea, Russian is the main language
• regions where Russian predominates almost exactly match those that voted for President Yankovich in 2010
• the 2010 election was deemed free and fair by the West.

Western Ukraine is agricultural, closer to Poland, and speaks Polish and Ukrainian:

• in religion it is a mixture of Orthodox Christianity and Catholocism
• the area murdered Poles by the hundreds after World War II when they occupied the area; that is forgotten in Poland’s quest for markets and Kiev’s quest for Europe.

Crisis Begins in the Ukraine 

The Ukrainian crisis began in November 2013 when Ukraine’s cabinet announced postponement of a proposed association agreement with the European Union:

• Russia feared the move would preclude Ukrainian membership in its own Eurasian Customs Union
• Russia threatened to impose higher energy prices
• the European Union failed to provide a financial package that would balance Russia’s actions
• President Yankovich played for time
• anti-government protestors, supporting closer ties with the EU, called for the president’s resignation and occupied Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti)
• the US and the EU backed the protesters
• the protest spread across the country
• public buildings in the Western Ukraine were occupied
• hundreds of people were injured in the violence and about 100 people were killed
• in February, the EU brokered an agreement with President Yanukovic that was rejected by the protesters
• parliament (the Rada) voted to oust the  president and hold new elections in May
• since this time, all official policy has been decided in consultation with protesters in the Maidan.

 Ukraine’s Interim Government

The interim government projects itself as both pro EU and pro US and it posits itself as anti-Russian. Some of its actions have proved inflammatory:

• the interim government disbanded the Berkut paramilitary muscle men and they are now in  the employ of anti-Kiev groups in the East and Crimea; in effect, they’ve become a freelance group of mercenaries
• the government de-recognized the official status of the Russian language, offending the nation’s Russian speakers
• efforts to establish control in Eastern Ukraine backfired, leading to violence, the hoisting of the Russian flag, ripping up of the Ukrainian flag, and burning effigies of the Maidan and its supporters.

Ukraine‘s body politic is deeply divided:

• politicians as a whole are discredited and are considered incompetent and corrupt
• unknowns are entering the political arena and destabilizing institutions.

Moscow’s Position

Moscow can’t afford to be passive:

• the Ukraine is crucial to Russian security and to its project to bring a strong Eurasian Union into being
• the number of refugees fleeing to Russia exceeds 150,000
• refugee camps are planned in the Rostov region.

The Crimea

The situation in the Crimea makes waiting for a solution until after May elections impossible:

• the Crimean peninsula was transferred from Soviet Russia to the Ukraine in 1954 as an autonomous province
• this majority Russian speaking region is of prime strategic significance to Russia
• Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has had its base for 200 years at Sevastopol
• after the break-up of the USSR, a lease agreement valid until 2042 has allowed the Russian fleet  to continue operating there in return for Russia supplying discounted natural gas
• according to the terms of its lease, Russia can station 161 aircraft, 388 warships, and 25,000 armed men in Crimea
• After the Maidan’s success in Kiev, the Crimean Rada (parliament) and the local Russian population have taken the path of independence; a referendum is scheduled to take place this month
• forces without official affiliation — Berkut and Russian troops without insignia — have moved to strategic locations
• Putin is sending more forces to safeguard Russian base interests and ethnic Russians.

What Does the Future Hold for Ukraine?

Apart from Crimea, there are other pro-Russian strongholds in Eastern Ukraine, like Donets and Kharkiv. What will Putin do? Will he also attempt to protect these areas militarily?

Future economic stability is questionable:

• Ukraine’s economy is smaller now than it was in 1992
• Russia’s monetary support will be terminated as will Eurasian Union tariff concessions
• Ukraine needs $35 million over the next two years to pay public sector salaries, energy bills from Russia, and to avoid default
• Ukraine has a current account deficit of 8% of GDP and its currency has already lost considerable value
• if the US, EU, and IMF come to Ukraine’s assistance, will they insist on “shock therapy” (stringent conditions including reduction of subsidies for heavy industry and energy? (for more info on proposed EU and US loans, read The New York Times)
• Kiev has said it will accept conditions but protesters are saying “Europe wants us as slaves.”

For a brief primer on neoliberalism, check out this You Tube Video.

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The Soviet Model

The “ideal type” Soviet model is reportedly characterized by massive government involvement in the economy as well as by the absence of private land ownership and free-market forces. Cities fitting the Soviet model have been identified in China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba.

Those who accept the relevance of an “ideal type” model use the following rationale as justification.

The socialist territorial order will not only be against the forms of concentration and division of labour developed by capitalism, but will also oppose any form of regression to the old, agricultural, rural, and pre-capitalist community. It is a totally new order, neither urban nor rural, based on undivided polyvalent productive unities. . . it is possible and necessary for societies in transition to begin to establish counter-trends (at least experimentally). As soon as possible, new polyvalent communities must be created with a high degree of socialist decentralization and development of uninhabited regions . . . industrialization of the countryside should be pursued by means of new small-scale technology, and diffusion of equal levels of services and knowledge.

Proponents also argue that the socialist city reflects specific physical characteristics, observing that:

skyscrapers are absent because no profit motive exists for their construction. Instead, large public squares mark the centers of most cities. These squares are politically significant since they are used for public gatherings and rallies. In addition, they are symbolically important, because they mark the communal heart of the socialist city.

It is interesting to note that some capitalist cities also have large public areas. For example, Taiwan’s memorial to Chiang Kai-shek makes Mao’s tomb in Tiananmen Square in Beijing look miniscule in comparison. It is easily the largest structure in all of Taiwan. The memorial is a good example of the problems associated with labeling cities according to ideal type for it reflects Leninist influences which permeated the Nationalist (KMT) government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.

In addition to the absence of skyscrapers and the presence of large public squares, three other characteristics are also said to distinguish the built environment of the socialist city:

• a “realism architecture” consisting of massive buildings constructed in “wedding cake” style and decorated with red stars
• an old town, the remnant of a more distant, but not necessarily valued, past
• greenbelts and parkland separating industrial development from the city center.

There was frequently a need for heavy industry to develop quickly without concern for environmental proprieties. Greenbelts were designed to separate this industrial development as far from the city center as possible. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is found in China where thousands of workers are active in agricultural communes in greenbelts surrounding many large cities. Havana is also noted for its green belt.

Interestingly, some argue that “realism architecture” is integral to the fascist city as well.

At any rate, according to Stanley D. Brunn and Jack F. Williams, the combination of these features is said to result in an “ideal type” Soviet model which “has produced distinctly different cities in virtually all aspects of urbanism, including morphology and internal spatial structure.”

Socialist cities are also described as having slow rates of urban growth, contributing to a reduction in their degree of urban primacy. You might remember that Brunn and Williams define the primacy ratio as the ratio of the first to the second largest city in a country, reflecting the degree of population dominance of the largest urban center. This variable is believed to reflect the key role of the state in relation to both the economy and civil society.

As Giddens notes:

. . . a strongly centralist Leninist ideology will sacrifice participation for control with consequent urban effects such as the desire to use cities as an explicit mechanism of surveillance to keep the population in check.

Control not only provides for the penetration of private and social space by the state, but also allows the government to restrict population mobility, including immigration to urban areas. So while many cities throughout the less developed world experienced growth from immigration flows as well as from in-migration, neither type of population flow had much impact on socialist cities which were more likely to be affected by emigration than immigration or even rural-urban migration. Consequently, it should not be surprising that many Marxist urbanists argue that socialist developing countries exhibit ” a slower rate of urban growth, compared to  many ‘capitalist’ developing countries.” They go on to say that:

Whilst a slower rate of urban growth is not typical of all socialist developing countries, it is typical of enough — and especially those which have been in existence for a comparatively long period of time — to make this a significant and important phenomenon.

A statistical snapshot of the Cold War period does provide some credence for slow-growth assertions. The socialist developing countries are under represented in a listing of the 40 fastest growing urban agglomerations from 1970-1985. Apart from Zibo and Chengdu in China, only Algiers (Algeria), Rangoon (Myanmar/Burma), and Baghdad (Iraq) are specified.

Needless to say, some non-socialist cities also exhibited slow growth, including Montevideo (Uruguay), Manila (Philippines), and Columbo (Sri Lanka). Taipei, too, is noted for its balanced urban development.

On the other hand, while not the fastest growing, many socialist countries were among the world’s most urbanized at Cold War’s end, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Mongolia.

In our next post on Cold War Cities, we’ll discuss The Capitalist City.