A Rebel's View of Russian Weakness

Pavel Gubarev's understanding of the pre-Maydan situation in Ukraine

I was glad to see that people enjoyed my English translation of “85 Days in Slavyansk”, which focused on the May-July 2014 fighting around the city of Slavyansk in the First Donbass War of 2014-2015. I’ve been working on a second translation, that of Russian separatist leader Pavel Gubarev’s “Torch of New Russia”. Focusing more on the grievances of the author and his supporters against Ukraine as well as their ideology and the organization of the protest movement in the Donbass, I think it will be an illuminating read for those curious about the first war.

Gubarev was a native of the city of Severodonetsk in the predominately industrial and Russian-speaking Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. A boxer and nationalist paramilitary man in his youth, he matured into a successful businessman and father before leading a protest movement with the aim at turning the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine into a new country - New Russia. After two months in Ukrainian jail, he joined the rebellion that had been launched in his absence and played a major role in organizing its logistical support. He was the target of two assassination attempts and later became a part of Russian civic organizations. More recently, he enlisted in the Russian army, participated in the fighting in the Second Donbass War 2022-present, then helped form the Club of Angry Patriots - an anti-Putin Russian militarist organization.

There are some parts of the book of general interest, three of which I have shared here. Human nature differs little across Eurasia and the Americas, and a perceptive reader can see the similarities in structures that emerge from human interaction.

In the first except below, Gubarev discusses the strength of nationalism and passion over statism even in the modern world. Formal control over political structures does not necessarily give one the ability to shape the future - as the Republicans in the United States struggle to understand.

The Donbass, its People, and its Enemies

My time in Ukrainian media and politics were the heyday of the Donbass’ influence in Ukraine. It was the oligarch Ahmetov and his nominee Yanukovich who ran things. Yanukovich had been President Kuchma’s prime minister and later failed successor. After losing the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, Yanukovich was nonetheless made prime minister under his rival Yushenko before his successful election as president in 2010. I know creatures like him well. It is clear why they, controlling the richest parts of Ukraine, nonetheless gave such primacy to rabid Banderists from the poorer western parts of Ukraine. And primacy to the West as well.

Yanukovich was the creature of primitive gangsters, and had been ever since his governorship of Donetsk. It is no wonder that such a lazy and unintelligent man had caused a crisis and lost power. He was short sighted, had a limited mind, and was incapable of thinking on a grand scale. His sole drives were greed and envy. A randomly picked “regionalist” could have done a better job at running Ukraine than Yanukovich. He was the fruit of a systematic problem where power was in the hands of looters. Power was merely for redirecting budget flows to their liking and seizing property. Was it really surprising that his clan was losing ground to even poor Galicia? It later turned out that not only was his clan squashing the Russian organizations of the southeast, but also nurturing neo-Banderist forces. They funded Tyagibokov’s nationalist “Freedom” organization, allowing it to build training camps and arming militants.

Not only was Yanukovich’s clan (he, his son, Arbuzov, Kurchenko, etc) involved in that, but also the Ahmetov-Kolesnikov clan and other old-school gangsters. They were so corrupt that their own companies were riven with theft. Contracts with Ahmetov’s companies were often more corrupt as state contracts. The different power structures and competing political groups within the state at least allowed for some competition. That competition didn’t exist in the Donbass. Decay reigned uncontested under the clans there. I saw it myself.

Those practices were brought to the national government after Yanukovich became president. Thus it should not be a surprise that the native Donetsk criminals never became the dominant force within Ukraine. They could not attract intelligent minds or righteous men. It was only the billionaires who made their fortune in the Great Grab who were drawn to them. The poor regions of the “Wild West” – Lvov, Ternopol, and Ivano-Frankovsk – were able to attract the intelligent and the righteous, and through them capture the minds of most of the country. There was no vision of a reunified Russia that could be expected from Ahmetov or Yanukovich. They couldn’t even articulate a political idea for the Donbass, much less the southeast or New Russia.

The question of national ideology had been raised in Ukraine prior to 1991. There was only one candidate for it – Ukrainian integral nationalism. It was a purely Galician phenomenon, a product of the peasant agrarian system in some parts of western Ukraine. The ideology had several points. The first was that Ukrainians are a great European nation with a thousand year history of struggle for independence from Moscow’s Asiatic yoke. The second is that Ukrainians are united with Europe by their European culture and a shared hatred against the Muscovites, Asiatics, and Soviet nostalgics. The third was that the struggle against the Muscovites for reunification with Europe is unceasing and has entered a stage of armed struggle. The fourth is that Ukrainians must win the struggle to reunite with Europe to live happily forever after in European civilization.

There was no other ideology in post-Soviet Ukraine. When outside forces staged the “EuroMaydan” against the Donetsk criminals who had been in power, the Dnepropetrovsk oligarchic clan (Poroshenko, Kolomoysky, and others) had no alternative ideology than that Galician nationalism to justify their move for power. The elites of the Donbass and New Russia as a whole could not and did not seek to create a political ideology. The interests of the Ukrainian oligarchy (from Bogdan Hmelnitsky to Petro Poroshenko) coincide with the interests of the independentists and clear-sighted nationalists in their protection of Western capitalists and from Russian competition. The oligarchs have always been primarily concerned with closing the path into their class through wealth inequality, the suppression of economic opportunity, and the granting of elite privileges. Examples of the coincidence of interests are the nationalist battalions, which have evolved into mercenary armies used like chained-dogs by the oligarchs.

That is why the Galicians were the actual ideological and political elite (in the sense of bearing the national ideology) of Ukraine after 1991, regardless of who held the offices of president and prime minister. Politicians ruled the people, but the Galicians ruled their souls. The Yanukovich clan didn’t understand that. Their psychology was primitive. They believed that since they controlled the courts, the budgets, and political offices that they truly dominated Ukraine. They saw ideas as worthless, something that could be faked at the snap of a finger. They were never a political elite. The real elite, full of the passion and intelligence that the Party of Regions lacked, animated Maydan. The gangster government had strangled political life in the Donbass, and the Party of Regions had no substance behind it.

When the thunder of the lightning strike at Maydan reached the Donbass, there were no intelligent and decisive leaders capable of articulating anything intelligible. The victory of armed neo-Banderists at Maydan was seen like an alien invasion even though multiple color revolutions had been launched in the Arab world since 2011. Yanukovich had even been warned of color revolutions, but was too short-sighted to understand their threat. Woe to the country whose rulers are short-sighted and indecisive.

In the Donbass, we watched all that happened at Maydan with a powerless rage. I remembered the first “separatist” congress in Severodonetsk in 2005, and attended two following congresses in 2010 and on 22 February 2014 (the latter in Kharkov). Our enemies had told us in 2004 that they were our masters, that they ruled us, and that we had to feed them. Later, in 2005, Prime Minister Timoshenko called for the Donbass to be fenced off with barbed wire. The young pro-Russia political class understood that we were in a deadly struggle with the neo-Banderites. Only the Yanukovich clan and its cronies failed to understand that.

In 2005 we had a number of Ukrainian nationalists, mostly from the west, study history at Donetsk University. A decade before the coup, we already arguing and brawling. Eventually, we both realized that war couldn’t be avoided. We were right.

In the second excerpt below, Gubarev discusses the inability of Russia (contrary to Western belief) to wage hybrid warfare due to its weak civic society and corrupt government. He argues, quite accurately in my opinion, that the growth of political movements depends primarily on the passion of their cadres - then secondarily upon outside funding which can enable them to scale up their operations.

He goes on to talk about the endurance of national and cultural folkways and identities even in the absence of propagating structures such as states. While an obvious truth, those trapped in Western discourse often find themselves unable to grasp it because few want to apply that truth to the United States. He offers a path of understanding for those trapped in Western discourse - reading. Even as censorship on social media spreads across the world, access to books old and new has never been easier. With the investment of an hour or two a day, a man can gain understanding and perspective on his own that few teachers or personalities could provide.

How the West Acted in Ukraine

I also remember how the West had been preparing for war for all of those years and how it became dominant in Ukrainian minds. The Kremlin likes to complain that it financed Ukraine’s independence to the tune of about $200 billion in gas subsidies. It obviously didn’t help. The West spent forty times less -about $5 billion, but achieved a great deal more.

The West invested its money skillfully, and in a targeted manner towards the most active people. By contrast, the Kremlin gave money to the corrupt, the stupid, and the bandits. More importantly, the West worked hard with its people, creating networks from them and supporting them. By the time that the second Maydan began, it had 150,000 “soldiers” at their disposal from non-profit organizations.

How did the West find those people? The Westerners first looked for people who were active without any funding, who worked on enthusiasm alone. They were people who wrote something or made something that was of value to the West. The West invested them by giving them grants. Each time they were preparing to make a grant, they reviewed the applicant’s activity. How is the applicant’s activity developing? How do then intend to spread their ideas? If the applicant is continuing to be valuable, then the West gives them more money. In addition, they will send them to training camps in Europe and America. The West looked and supported activists from across the political spectrum – from outspoken neo-Banderists to animals rights activists to sexual minorities. The Americans did not launch activities with money – they looked to see what was going on without them, then expanded them with greater funding. They looked for sincere supporters – real Ukrainian nationalists and supporters of a Western-style democracy, then invested in them. The results were obvious.

What did Russia do? It was all about “money”. Some money was appropriated for events. Some was squandered by incompetents. Some money was simply stolen, with kickbacks being paid to the disbursement agent. By the time of the Kiev coup on 21 February 2014, there was almost no Russian influence in the Donbass. There was some influence in Crimea, but barely anything in Donetsk. The Russian government had no organization, and knew few people. It was a major contrast to the Americans, who had a file-cabinet worth of connections. The difference in approaches was shown in time.

At Donetsk University 2000-2005 we made a club for New Russia history buffs. It was only a small circle in a sea of gloom. We didn’t get any grants from Russia, and no one scaled up our activities. Those who preached Ukrainian nationalism and demonized monstrous Muscovites and Asiatics by contrast did receive grants. Our opponents in the history department received invitations and tickets to symposiums and conferences abroad. Some went to Poland, the Baltic, and the United States. Their worldview was elevated to canon status by the power of the state and foreign grants. It became mainstream. Our views by contrast were considered to be wrong. My friends and I were marginalized.

The power of the Ukrainian nationalists was a thousand times greater than ours, and manifested itself at Maydan. It turned out that the flexible, clever, and predatory American system was more adept in the struggle for the hearts and minds of Ukrainians than the slow moving and bureaucratic Russian system. One side had motivated, active, and well-funded fanatics. The other had nothing. Those few funded by Russia turned out to be grifters, and they instantly disappeared as soon as the enemy made himself known.

Even now, Russia isn’t ready for hybrid warfare. That kind of struggle is fought with information, charity, creativity, networked structures, and civic engagement. What Moscow can achieve with billions of dollars, the Americans can achieve with merely tens of millions. It is very disappointing that the Americans had fifteen projects in the Donbass while the Russian Federation didn’t even have one. USAID, the Adenauer Foundation, an anti-smoking project, and other Western foundations all worked to undermine pro-Russian sympathies in the Donbass, yet failed. The Americans had pawns in the game for the Donbass while Russia had queens.

Funded activists were bedazzled by the United States. They were enchanted with images of the beautiful West and the ideals of democracy. The Americans worked hard to indoctrinate them, and many became sincere believers. The Americans also got quality people – many were educated and successful with nice cars and nice apartments.

The enemy succeeded in one of the most important struggles – to be seen as fashionable, modern, and cool. Meanwhile, the idea of the Russian World was seen as archaic, Soviet, and outdated. Russia’s failure in the culture cost it a great deal of Russian blood.

I knew all of this years before the war for New Russia began. When the lightning struck, when the thunder boomed, I was ready and made my move. Do you know who helped me? Who taught me how to see the world and to understand its metamorphosis? Books. The wise works of long dead thinkers.

The third excerpt is a remarkably prescient passage on Russia’s difficulties in the Second Donbass War 2022-present. Its weak civil society, declining industry, and sclerotic political structure do not allow it to mobilize its tremendous resources for wars of conquest - only protracted “special military operations”.

Head of the Mobilization Board

…After the referendum, I had to admit to myself that the Russian Federation was not going to annex the Donbass, and that we couldn’t count on its help. As a historian by training and vision, I knew that by mid-May 2014 Moscow had more than enough reason to send in troops. Less than six years earlier, two days of fighting in South Ossetia and the killing of civilians was enough for the Kremlin to launch an operation against Georgia. Here, despite the junta’s most outrageous atrocities and shelling of towns, Moscow only uttered indignant words. Even when the number of dead and wounded was in the hundreds, Russia refused to recognize us even though it had recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We had to defend and reconquer the territory of the DPR ourselves. Thus the task of building a normal – or at least as normal as could be achieved in such times – state apparatus became a priority. After all, what could Strelkov do without supplies?

Now, in the summer of 2015, as I write these lines, I understand why Russia doesn’t enter the Donbass War with its full strength. An open deployment of Russian troops in the Donbass would make a protracted war between Russia and Ukraine inevitable. There was no way that Russian leaders could let it proceed. Why?

First, the semi-colonial economy of the Russian Federation depends on the markets and goodwill of the West. Real power in Russia is held by Big Business, with the state only a formal gloss over it. The interests of those businesses conflict with the interests of the state. Since those businesses are heavily resource based – oil, minerals, and other raw materials - they push for closer relations to the West. Russian industry and agriculture also rely on the West, but for imports. Seeds, equipment, spare parts, and medicine, food additives, and livestock are all imported. The Russian Federation hasn’t fully developed its banking sector, so it depends on the Western financial system. Were the Russian Federation to get involved in a prolonged war, it could end up in a catastrophe worse than that of 1917 and 1991.

Although Russia is not really an oligarchy (that would require the systematic rather than incidental subordination of state policy to the interests of capital), big business nonetheless united against the Donbass War due to economic sanctions. Influential liberals as well as government officials and state bankers stated their opposition. They even refused to open up branches of Sberbank and VTB in Crimea out of fear of Western sanctions. Even Gazprom wouldn’t go to Crimea. The liberal faction still clings tightly to the management of the Russian economy and finances, and they are almost entirely against the war.

Secondly, the divisions in Russian society make it impossible to bring the entire population on board for a protracted conflict with Ukraine – a country with a population of over forty million. It is possible to enter such a conflict only when Kseniya Sobchak, the glamorous socialite, gives up her luxurious lifestyle and goes to work in a military factory. People have been corrupted in the last twenty-four years. Like Westerners, we’ve turned into infantile consumers unwilling to bear hardships. How would we withstand a full-fledged economic blockade of the country by the West?

Those are objective and detached ruminations. In our hearts we wish that Russia had helped us. We saw the dead bodies, the destroyed houses, and the ruined factories. The broader political situation didn’t concern us at all.

I plan on having the translation out by the end of the month, and believe that most of you would find at least the historical parts (the first two-thirds of the book) interesting. The ideological discussion in the last third of the book is rather dull, and will be primarily of interest to heterodox economic left-wing readers.