From Head to Toe
A Neo-Marxist Reading of Ukraine
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The war between Russia and Ukraine is generally interpreted from a culturalist perspective. However, the methodological nationalism inherent in such approaches is misleading. Anyone who wants to understand developments in Ukraine and the escalation of the conflict with Russia must view the events as a class conflict. Neither the political capitalists, often referred to as “oligarchs”, nor the urban middle class, associated with transnational capital, have managed to present the working class and the lower middle class with a convincing forward-looking project for Ukraine and thus achieve cultural hegemony. The constellation is the same as in Poland or Hungary, only the geo-political environment is different. Russia, too, was characterised by this post-Soviet class conflict until Putin’s Caesarean model of rule prevailed. Russia’s ruling class has been attempting to extend this model to Ukraine since 2022.
(Osteuropa 5/2025, pp. 125–142)