'Nuanced, melancholy, sophisticated and gratifyingly intimate.'–Yanis Varoufakis, author of TechnofeudalismUkrainian politics, the Russian invasion and the escalating crisis of the post-Soviet worldTowards the Abyss presents searching analysis of a decade of war and upheaval in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko has been among the left's most significant commentators on Ukraine since 2014, when pro-EU protestors toppled the government in Kiev, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donbass. One of his first thoughts when he read the news of the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 was that no matter how the war ends, he will no longer have a homeland.What has happened in Ukraine ever since the Soviet collapse is a drawn-out process of de-modernization, and the downward spiral is getting faster. Ishchenko argues that the conflict being fought in Ukraine with tanks, artillery and rockets is the same conflict suppressed by police batons in Belarus and in Russia itself. The intensification of the post-Soviet crisis – the incapacity of an oligarchic ruling class in the territories of the former USSR to sustain political or moral leadership – is the root cause of the escalating violence.

Towards the Abyss : Ukraine From Maidan to War

Ishchenko, Volodymyr

Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1), London, 2024

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Ukrainian politics, the Russian invasion and the escalating crisis of the post-Soviet world
In Towards the Abyss , social scientist Volodymyr Ishchenko tracks a decade of war and upheaval in Ukraine. Ishchenko has been among the most significant left-wing commentators on Ukraine since 2014 when pro-EU protestors toppled the government in Kiev, pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donbas and Putin annexed Crimea. His analysis gives a deeper understanding of the countrys political dynamics. NATO occupies a peculiar place in this history and Ishchenko sifts Ukrainians' attitudes towards it.
Ishchenkos parents worked as Soviet scientists and engineers in Kiev on cybernetics and cosmonautics. No outside power has offered Ukraine a future that compares to this lost world of Soviet modernity.
He argues that the conflict being fought in Ukraine with tanks, artillery and rockets is the same conflict that police batons have suppressed in Belarus and Russia itself. The intensification of the post-Soviet crisis the incapacity of an oligarchic ruling class in the territories of the former USSR to develop sustained political, moral and intellectual leadership is the root cause for the escalating violence.

2024-05-10