Union, expulsion from the party means that the victims face harsh material reprisals for their critical attitude.
A CANADIAN STUDY OF EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UKRAINE
By Ross Dowson
EDUCATION IN THE SOVIET UKRAINE, by John Kolasky. Peter Martin Associates, Toronto. 238 pp. $3.50. 1968.
Leon Trotsky, coleader with Lenin of the Russian revolution and founder of the Fourth International, in an article dated April 22, 1939, entitled "The Problem of the Ukraine," wrote:
"In order to guarantee ‘administrative needs,' i.e., the interests of the bureaucracy, the most legitimate claims of the oppressed nationalities were declared a manifestation of pettybourgeois nationalism. All these symptoms could be observed as early as 1922- 1924. Since that time they have developed monstrously and have led to outright strangulation of any kind of independent national development of the peoples of the USSR....Nowhere did restrictions, purges, repressions and in general all forms of bureaucratic hooliganism assume such murderous sweep as they did in the Ukraine in the struggle against the powerful deeply rooted longings of the Ukrainian masses for greater freedom and independence."*
Aside from the intrinsic importance of this whole question, what inpelled Trotsky to take it up when he did was a situation that was developing in Canada, and in a parallel way in Ukrainian emigré Communist circles around the world. Since 1933, Ukrainian workers and farmers had been moving away from the Communist movement and falling into either passivity or nationalism. This trend became very sharp in Canada. Trotsky's article was intended to explain the nature of Stalinism to these forces and try to save them for socialisn.
Education in the Soviet Ukraine appears thirty years later at another critical turn -- a rebirth of the struggle against the bureaucracy by socialist opposition currents within both the Ukraine and Russia, with the consequent
* Trotsky's article was published in an English translation in the Socialist Appeal of May 9, 1939. It aroused widespread discussion and some controversy. Trotsky answered the objections in an article "Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads" which was published in an English translation in two issues of the Socialist Appeal -- September 15 and 17, 1939. The two articles were reprinted in the November and December, 1949, issues of Fourth International. -- W.0O impact this is having on Ukrainian- Canadians around the Communist party, who are faced once again with the necessity of evaluating the "problem of the Ukraine."
It was in response to the growing reports of the suppression of the rights of Ukrainians, and the dissension these reports were causing in Ukrainian- Canadian circles, that a delegation headed by Tim Buck went to the Ukraine last spring. Their report, released in February in the January-—dated Viewpoint, while loaded with assurances that all will be well, nonetheless admitted that there have been gross violations of the national rights of the 40,000,000 Ukrainians. [See World Outlook, March 1, p. 174.]
John Kolasky's book is an integral part of the ferment in Ukrainian-Canadian left circles. It is the result of a twoyear stay in the Ukraine from 1963 to 1965. The Canadian schoolteacher went to study at the Shevchenko University in Kiev. His personal experiences led him to make a detailed study of the educational system in the Ukraine. The evidence that he presents of the imposition of the Russian language and the suppression of the Ukrainian language and culture is overwhelming and unchallengeable.
Kolasky clearly shows that the policy of Russification, which really began under Stalin, violates every principle on the national question propounded by Lenin. In fact it was around this very question that Lenin intended to give battle to the bureaucracy at the time of his death. Kolasky also shows that contrary to the expectations of many people, Russification of the Ukraine took on an even wider and harsher character under Khrushchev.
Unfortunately, while he is strong on the results of Great Russian chauvinism, Kolasky fails to grasp the roots of this criminal policy. He calls the policy of the heads of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic toward the Ukraine, "imperialism." This is the scientific term for the most ruthless, exploitative, and last stage of monopoly capitalisn. However, the information submitted by Kolasky on the suppression of the rights of other nationalities besides the Ukrainians, including those within the RSFSR itself, confirms Trotsky's contention that it is a matter here, as on other questions, of the bureaucracy's frightened, arrogant, administrative and regulative approach to the problems of planning and centralization.
"It is a question not of the oppression of one nationality over another in the proper sense of the word," wrote Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed, "but of oppression by the centralized police apparatus over the cultural development of all nations, starting with the Great Russian."
Kolasky compounds his error by presenting the national problem in Belgium, which has been reaching fresh in-
VIETNAM WAR PROTEST
Opposition continues to deepen in Japan to any further escalation of involvement in Washington's aggression in Vietnam. The Christian Science Monitor reported March 28 that "an edgy mood of apprehension about the Vietnam war seems to be growing among the Japanese people at large....
"Ever since the Tet offensive, the unsettling feeling has prevailed that something is radically wrong, that the United States may resort to nuclear weap~ ons.
A number of clashes have taken place in recent months between the antiwar movement and the growing U.S. military presence in Japan. The major incidents have been the visit to Japan of the Vietnam-bound nuclear carrier Enterprise in January, the moving of B-52 bombers to Okinawa, the plans for building an airport at Narita that will handle American military flights, and the recent opening of a U.S. army hospital in Kita Ward of Tokyo to treat Vietnam casualties.
The Socialist, Komeito, and Communist parties announced March 8 that they would submit a "B-52 withdrawal resolution" to the Diet in Tokyo.
The same night students clashed with police in front of the U.S. "field hospital." The Japan Times reported March 10:
"Riot police, 2,000 strong, battled with 1,200 rock~hurling Zengakuren demonstrators around a newly built U.S. Army field hospital at Oji, Tokyo, and arrested 157 of them....at least 72 police officers and 24 students were injured in the clashes which continued for more than five hours."
The Japan Times said that unionists and onlookers cheered the students. "Unionist demonstrators, about 1,000 in all, meanwhile, staged a street rally near the hospital's main gate, shouting