Reluctantly, it is dawning on Western Europe, from the front seats of events unfolding in Ukraine, and on America, with more of an emotional lag, that all geopolitical assumptions have been upended for a generation, and maybe longer…
Formal and informal agreements holding the interests of global – and regional – nation-states in balance are back on the drawing board
By engaging in a war with Ukraine, Russia has squandered every last figment of credibility as a responsible member of the UN Security Council, its reliability in doubt for even its close (and recent) partner, China, and its economy in shambles
In attempting to explain such extreme miscalculation, much is made of Mr. Putin’s contempt for the West in general, and for his fellow Slavs of Ukraine in particular, and this ready-made interpretation may hold a nugget of truth
…and little more…
By harking back to a weary narrative about Western aggression, a more convincing and more profound reality might be overlooked
Mr. Putin's assault on Ukraine interpreted as a forlorn attempt to raise the drawbridge against Western democratic influence seeping across Russian borders
...in Byelorussia yesterday, in Kazakhstan the day before and of course in Ukraine, every day since the Maidan revolution (2004)
If national identities in Central Europe gain a new lease on life because of democratic aspirations in every country, autocrats should be very afraid, their propaganda machines ignored and their armies powerless, sooner or later
However, the time Russia's grip on Central Europe becomes unglued will also be the time of great collective danger across Europe
Ukraine, an ‘Anti-Russia’ created by the West’
With these words of the Russian president, the war – and the destructions wrought by his armies – may turn out to be existential
Mr. Putin’s words are revealing
While in keeping with the propaganda spoon-fed to his domestic audience, they point to a fundamental angst, a pervasive dread
Russia’s imperial history might in fact be coming to an end
“Anti-Russia” could be read as the last gasp of a weakened empire, driven one more time by insecurity behind its current borders, a major factor in the country’s history as shown in our ‘Sense of Possibility’
The 2013-2014 Maidan uprising putting the Ukrainian society on a democratic track, the very recent protests in Byelorussia where a dictator is barely hanging on, and the troubles in Kazakhstan, involve the three former crown jewels of the USSR
All three have lit up, flashing red
Sensing a profound challenge to autocratic rule, Mr. Putin may have sought to keep first-mover advantage in Ukraine, just after his army’s brief incursion in Kazakhstan and reinstated control over Byelorussia
Will against will
As the war in Ukraine unfolds, the national forces have engaged a moral crusade against autocracy
The military battle will probably be lost against powerful Russian armies but the moral superiority of the national Ukrainian sentiment will reassert itself, giving it time…
Powered by shared values, Ukrainians are challenging Mr. Putin’s arbitrary will in the name of a deep-seated cultural identity
A dire outlook for strong men across Central Europe who would have done well to ponder Lenin’s advice to revolutionaries the world over
‘to utilize every popular movement against each separate disaster caused by imperialism in order to sharpen and extend the crisis’
Where Lenin referred to popular movement of the great proletarian war for emancipation and socialism, in a not altogether surprising reversal of fortune,
it is popular emancipation in the name of national identity which gives meaning to the Ukrainian struggle and imperialism is born by Russia’s weapons
The Ukrainian national aspirations
The power of Ukrainian national feeling has been ignored in the run-up to the Russian invasion, neglected in the West and repressed by Russia long before…
The fact is Ukraine has been recognized as an independent state for only a few intermittent years during the past 100 years, and ignorance of the broader region’s complex history contributed to confusion in Europe
In fact, the successive wars, occupations and shifting borders across Central Europe did not destroy the country’s common heritage, although the successive Russian governments since the 18th century did their best to eradicate the Ukrainian language
Belonging to the same linguistic family, East Slavic, as Russian, the language survived brutal repression, after 1863 with closure of libraries, prohibition in schools and deportation of leading Ukrainian figures to North Russia
Intense efforts of Russification contributed to massive illiteracy in the Ukrainian peasantry, but the sense of belonging survived in the population’ oral tradition of old ballads celebrating great national heroes from well before Russian dominance, the age of the Hetmanate and the Sich, Cossacks which fought off the Crimean Tatars
In a time capsule
Falling to the Mongol invasion after 1240, the Slavic population of the pre-existing realm of the Kiev Grand Princes’ of Rus split between the North, which, after 150 years of Mongol rule, founded Muscovy and Great Russia, and the South, which turned westward
In the South, the rich lands of what was to become Ukraine first fell under the influence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and came later under Polish rule, before seeking autonomy as the Ukrainian Cossacks fought the Tatars (1540’s) which led to the foundation of an independent Hetmanate, after struggling another 100 years (1649)
In danger of constant encroachments by their powerful neighbor to the North, the Ukrainian Hetmanate sought an alliance with the Swedes, under their strong ruler Charles XII, as protection against the ambitions of Russia's Peter the Great
With the Swedish defeat against Russia in 1709, Ukraine fell under Russia’s influence without recourse against integration, voiding the Hetmanate of autonomy and imposing Russian feudalism by the end of the century (1765-1796)
Over the centuries, the Western powers may be forgiven to have remained oblivious of the endless wars, peasant uprisings and changing alliances in those far-away lands, hardly accessible except by river transport in the summer…
Peasant heroism
All through the ages, peasantry dominated Ukraine’s vast and mostly empty lands
At the turn of the 20th century, the conflict between peasants living in poverty with little holdings and vast Russian estates devolved to imperial favorites sharpened social awareness amongst what was left of Ukrainian intellectual classes, open to political change
This is how the revolutionary uprisings in Russia – from 1905 and ultimately with the Bolsheviks in 1917 – were actively supported
Enthralled and expecting support for independence, the Ukrainian leaders were quickly disabused by Lenin’s ambiguities, refusing autonomy to nation-states except as temporary stage to universal revolution and rejecting the political significance of the peasantry, perceived as a backward conservative force
The foundation of an autonomous state, supported by the anti-Soviet forces which had sprung up, was crushed by 1921; once subjugated under full control of the new Russian regime, Ukraine was to enjoy a measure of cultural liberty…hardly promising and cut short as the deadly 1930’s loomed
All through assaults on their integrity, the fact remains that Ukrainian national consciousness was kept alive by the Ukrainian peasant
Not so benign rulers
Lording over the land, Moscow’s not-so-benign neglect of Ukrainian aspirations, and their rulers’ determination to mold the country in orderly uniformity with Russia, has weighed heavily on many falsehoods and continues to do so
The West may have been confused – and to a large extent, indifferent – to Ukrainian national sentiment but Russia cannot plead forgetfulness, nor entertain an illusion of Slavic brotherhood to hide assaults on the country’s integrity
Two facts stand out - Serfdom promulgated in the late 18th century and 1930's Holodomor, the Terror-Famine
Ukrainians had inherited from theiur Hetmanate past a degree of constitutional freedom which, in combination with their country’s natural resources, protected their living conditions…
This was not to last as the government of Catherine II (empress from 1762 to 1796) imposed serfdom on the Ukrainian peasant population, in the logic of the Russian feudal system and land ownership, in the time of the European Age of ‘Enlightenment’…
Turning downright hostile under Bolshevik rule, Ukraine was tragically caught up in the internal war led to land collectivization and elimination of the ‘kulak’, deemed to be a rich exploiting peasant class
Extending into Ukraine, the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 killed millions of Ukrainians by starvation as their entire food holdings were confisacted and population movements bloqued
While Russian intentionality is still subject to debate, the systematic nature of the Holodomor, known as Terror-Famine or Great Famine, is not in doubt
With the benefit of hindsight, the strong national feelings should not astonish and Kobzar, the poetry of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), first published in 1840, led a revival of Ukrainian litterature with a symbolism which is not about to die down...