“No other country in the world is cloaked in such contradictory myths about its history as Russia, and no other nation in the world interprets its history as variously as do the Russian people.”
—Dimitry Likhachov, in “Russian Culture in the Modern World,” Russian Social Science Review 34, no. 1 (February 1, 1993).
It has been over a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Worthy of consideration is the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance and the grim tally thus far, with each side suffering the deaths of 100,000 fighters. The Ukrainian resolve is based on a perspective of history that is different than the one in Moscow.
In a speech three days prior to launching the 2022 attack of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered an argument of history, a viewpoint that
Ukraine is not a natural nation-state. In his address of February 21, Putin stated, “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” He added, “Since time immemorial the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state and after.” In essence, Putin was arguing that Ukraine is actually Russia. No doubt this mentality gave Putin self-justification for his 2014 annexation of Crimea and his support of the separatists in the Donbas region.
The Ukrainian rejection of Putin’s political assertion is based on details that are not as neat and tidy as Kremlin propaganda. The first problem with Putin’s argument of history is the starting point of “time immemorial”; for instance,
there was a period in which Russian history was largely Varangian (Viking). The second problem is the extent of the granularity of the history; for instance, some Ukrainians referred to themselves as Ruthenian (Eastern Slavs). The third problem is distinguishing legend from fact; for instance, the early Ukrainian “history” is shrouded in myth and legend and there is no consensus among historians about the actual details. The fourth problem is recognizing the change and continuity over time; for instance, a continually shared cultural history hardly demands perpetual political union.
The name “Ukraine” could possibly bolster Putin’s view, as it seems to be based on a Slavic word meaning “frontier” or “borderland.” In the not-so-distant past, Ukraine was generally referred to as “The Ukraine”—suggesting it is not autonomous, but rather a part of something larger. Indeed, Ukraine has been the borderland of varying nations while being subsumed in part or in whole. Over the centuries, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Austria and Turkey have controlled portions of Ukrainian land. For years, the Mongolians collected tribute from Ukrainians and Russians. In the southern part of the land, the Cossacks, a fearless and proud people, were like a nation onto themselves. The same situation is true with Tartars. While it is true that the Russian Empire had once dominated Ukraine, Putin’s “time immemorial” claim is an ambiguous assertion about the Kievan state of “Rus.”
Rus was formed in the 9th century, representing the first Slavic state. Its political and cultural center was Kiev, not Moscow, and its territory largely extended
from southern Muscovy to the Black Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains to the Don River. By 1240, however, the Kievan state had fragmented into feuding city-states, a consequence of Mongolian oppression. This Mongolian period resulted in the gradual formation of three distinctive Kievan groupings. The western section came under control of Lithuania, a territory that would later be taken over by Poland. The two groups of the eastern section were Belarussian and Ukrainian. The northeast Kievan section came under the control of the Grand Prince of Muscovy, during a time when Mongols were still collecting tribute. This period coincided with the principate of Muscovy transforming into Greater Russia. By 1450, Moscow became independent of the Mongolians, allowing expansion into Belarus and Ukraine. By 1700, with Peter the Great as Tsar, Muscovy became the Russian Empire, yet not all of Ukraine was under his control. It would take the next two centuries for that to happen, though some Ukrainians would remain under the control of Austria-Hungary. If one studies the granularity of this history, it becomes clear that when Ukrainians were finally absorbed by Russia, the Russians were not heartily welcomed.
In the meantime, nationalist movements were occurring in many places, including Ukraine. What can be noted is that whenever space opened for cultural freedom, Ukrainians promoted themselves as a separate people. When they had freedom to speak and write in the Ukrainian language, they did so. When their artists could extol Ukrainian culture, they did so. Ukraine’s most cherished poet, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), mirrored Ukrainian identity in his works and indignantly focused on
Russian oppression. The truth is, for years and years the Ukrainian people wished to be Ukrainian. Shevchenko remains a beloved poet because he spoke what his people deeply felt.
Ukrainian nationalism parallels other situations in which people who had been forcefully absorbed into empires longed for independence. Following World War I, with an emphasis on national determinism, large empires were dismantled, and new European nations established. In 1918, with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Bolsheviks withdrew from the Great War by obtaining a separate peace with Germany. The result was Russia was forced to grant independence to Ukraine, Georgia and Finland while handing over control of Poland and the Baltic nations to Germany. Soon after, however, the Bolsheviks regained control of Ukraine and Georgia.
Interestingly, in his February 21 speech Putin offered a negative criticism of Soviet history with respect to Ukraine. The new communist regime, believing in part with the sentiments of national determinism (as officially it was against imperialism), recognized the reality of nation-states within the borders of the old Tsarist Empire. Putin bitterly blames Vladimir Lenin for treating Ukraine as distinctive. “Nobody asked the millions of people living there [in Ukraine] what they thought,” he added. He takes exception to the Soviet history of the 1920s that declared Ukraine a republic as part of a confederacy with the right to succession! Lenin made “a mistake” and “This became patently clear,” Putin continued, “after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.” Here Putin omits that when Ukrainians were then asked what they thought, about 90% of the voters (with an 82% turnout) favored independence.
When the USSR ended, it was the consequence of action by Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Those three entities
signed The Minsk Declaration (1991). The document explains that as “founder states” of the Soviet government, they have the right as “contracting parties” to dissolve the USSR. Interestingly, when the United Nations was founded, Stalin arranged for Ukraine and Belarus to have their own seats in that body, suggesting their unique status (or another way of admitting these were captive nations). The three parties signing The Minsk Declaration pledged “mutual recognition and respect for state sovereignty, the inalienable right to self-determination, the principles of equality and noninterference in internal affairs.” Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, crafted the document, which for today’s Russia is inconvenient history. The same Yeltsin handed the Russian presidency to Putin. And the same Yeltsin offered security assurances when Ukrainians voluntarily handed over the nuclear weapons that were left on its territory following the demise of the USSR.
Why after the end of the Soviet Union was Ukraine so quick to declare independence? Certain Soviet history no doubt contributed to that action. Five years earlier there was the horrific disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant, which was greatly mishandled by Soviet authorities and underscored how Moscow seldom operated with Ukraine’s best interest. Worse than that, however, was the memory of the Holodomor of 1932-1933, when Stalin confiscated all of the Ukrainian grain in order to sell it on the international market to obtain hard currency for his industrialization program, resulting in cruel starvation deaths of 3 to 5 million Ukrainians. Perhaps more than any other event, the Holodomor reinforced Ukrainian selfidentity and longing for freedom apart from Russia. And this past, along with Russia’s post-Soviet interference in Kiev’s internal affairs, contributed to Ukraine’s desire for NATO membership.
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