Research strategy of cultural materialism: Case of the Ukrainian left at the turn of the centuries

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to check the relevance of the theoretical basis of cultural materialism, correlating it with our own analysis of the left segment of the Ukraine's political life during the period of independence. In this analysis, we tried to identify the infrastructural, structural and superstructural factors that determined the dynamics of the political process, and also to clarify the causal priority existing between them. In the national elections of 1994, 1998, 1999, left political parties have demonstrated impressive results and some positive dynamics. Each time since the 2002 parliamentary elections, they received fewer votes and reduced their presence in the Verkhovna Rada. In the 2000s, reduction of the “political weight” of the Left was more in- tensive than its growth in the 1990s. Economic stabilization and the gradual increase in household incomes have poached the part of their electorate from the “old left”, and the results of the voting allegedly approved the socio-economic policy of the executive branch. In the 2000s, the voter preferred a capitalist course of development more than he did in the 1990s. The consolidation of the post-Soviet neo-nomenclature and the big bourgeoisie, which tended to merge into a single social stratum, the oligarchy, led to an attempt to form a “historical bloc” (in the Gramscian sense) in Ukraine, that is, to ensure the approval of the current system by the most numerous class – hired workers. Particularly in the case of Ukraine, this was supposed to be the support of the executive power to maintain the majority system of parliamentary elections.