Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 17 – Many arguments
about Ukraine have become a battle of analogies where advocates of various
outcomes do so less by talking about what conditions are actually like in that
country than by suggesting analogies with countries which also have significant
regional tensions.
One such case is an exchange between
two commentators who are usually on the same side when it comes to regionalism
and its management in the Russian Federation but now find themselves on opposite
sides concerning Ukraine, with one suggesting that Donetsk is like Catalonia in
Spain and the other argument that that Ukrainian region is in fact like Ulster.
Vadim Shteppa led off this debate
with an article in “Izvestiya” this week entitled “Democrats against Democracy”
in which he outlined the plusses of a federal system for Ukraine, the
shortcomings of the Ukrainian government, and the way in which Catalonia can
serve as a model for dealing with Donets and other regions (izvestia.ru/news/570707
The
Russian regionalist says that there is no basis for concluding that the Maidan
reflected the views “of the entire people of Ukraine” especially given that in
overturning the earlier government, it did not so much install its own leaders
as allow the rise of representatves of the opposition party nomenklaturas.”
The
Kyiv government and its supporters, he says, view the May 25 presidential elections
as a solution to their problems, as an act that will “return the country to
complete legitimacy.” But in making that
assumption, they are not taking into consider “the main thing: after February
the civic consciousness of Ukraine,” especially in the regions, “already has
essentially changed.”
Ukrainian
leaders define their task as the Europeanization of their country, Shteppa
says, but they ignore an important aspect of European reality: “Contemporary
Europe is experiencing an active outburst of regional movements which are
demanding the reformatting of the EU in order that local interests will be
taken into account.”
To
the extent that Kyiv leaders reject something similar for Ukraine, any new
president will soon be “only ‘a new Yanukovich,’” the leader the Maidan
organized against and successfully ousted.
After
the loss of Crimea, Ukrainian leaders began to talk more about the regions, but
they have not been very specific about what they would do, a problem given that
existing Ukrainian law largely precludes giving the regions more autonomy and
authority.
That
makes the refusal of the Verkhova Rada to hold at the same time as the
presidential elections “an all-national consultative vote on the state
structure of Ukraine, Shteppa says, even if that did not have the status of a
referendum and even if it was cast in the most general language about support
for “a unitary and European state with broad powers” for the regions.
According
to Shteppa, the current Ukrainian situation resembles “a strange remake of
Russian history of the early 1990s,”
when “many politicians who called themselves ‘democrats loudly called for the dissolution
of the democratically elected Supreme Soviet,” an action that set that country
on an entirely different path than the one they proclaimed.
Formally,
the Verkhovna Rada is on the opposite side in that conflict, “but in essence it
is in a similar situation. These ‘democrats’
in principle do not want to listen to the point of view of the majority of the population
of their country. What kind of ‘triumph of democracy’ can one speak of given
that?”
Shteppa
suggests that a real referendum in Ukraine might offer a choice between support
“for the transformation of Ukraine into a federal state where the governor of
each oblast is elected by its population and its legislation is written by the
local rada” or backing for “the reservation of the unitary system of
administration in which governors are appointed by the president and tax and
language policies are set only by the central authorities.”
In
the view of the Russian regionalist, support for the first would come “not only
in Donetsk but in Lviv” as well. But Ukrainians won’t find out because “the
current Kyiv authorities are simply in a panic and afraid of federalism,” which
they “immediately associate with ‘the collapse of the country.’”
The
Ukrainian leaders ignore the fact that federal systems in the US and Germany
are strong and that neither threatens the territorial integrity of the
country. “The real collapse of Ukraine
could occur only as a result of unitary centralism, which ignores the varied
regional characteristics of this country,” Shteppa says.
As
long as the Ukrainian authorities “do not want to listen to the voices of the
regions, they should not be surprised that ‘self-organized’ referenda will be
conducted in the latter.” Such a pattern is completely within the European
tradition: In November, Catalonia will hold a referendum on independence, “despite
Madrid’s ‘ban’” on that.
Shteppa’s
argument was challenged yesterday by his friend Aleksey Shiropayev in an
article on Rufabula.com. Shiropayev, who
is also a committed regionalist, said he found Shteppa’s article “strange”
because the author treated Ukrainian democracy as something not yet in
existence and drew the wrong analogies (rufabula.com/articles/2014/05/16/orda-trend).
Shiropayev takes particular
exception to Shteppa’s analogy between Donets and Catalonia. The situations of the two are fundamentally
different. There are no ‘foreign diversionists and terrorists” in Catalonia,
but there are in Donets. And there are no “’little green men’” in the former,
although they are all too prominent in the latter.
Europeans see the difference even if
Shteppa doesn’t. They see “in the events
in the south-east a form of the carrying out of an imperial war against
Ukraine.” Telling them that Donetsk is
just like Catalonia would be likely to generate a reaction very different from
the one he expects.
Catalonia, Shiropayev continues,
despite its drive toward independence, “does not think of itself outside of the
European Union. European integration in
fact would be the strategic direction of the development of Catalonia after the
acquisition of independence.” The Donets and Luhansk activists are moving “in a
completely opposite direction geographically and civilizationally.”
Donetsk and Luhansk “are
demonstrating not a Europen but a Eurasian horde trend.” As such, they are a
Soviet-style “parody on Catalonia,” in which they promote “a regional brand” by
speaking in front of statues to Lenin, carrying red flags, and singing the
Soviet and not even the Russian hymn.
These two regions are not seeking “genuine
independence.” They want that only as “an intermediate step on the path to
Russia which they consider to be the historical continuation of the USSR.” That
is captured in their slogan: “’We are for federationalization to [sic] Russia.”
What they want is not federalism or regionalism or even separatism.
Instead, what is going on there is
the actions of “a movement which serves the imperial interests of the Kremlin.”
It is more than a little strange, he says, that Shteppa doesn’t see this
reality.
.
Another issue altogether is whether
Ukraine might be better off without Donetsk and Luhansk, without “the ballast”
that these constitute on “the balloon of a European Ukraine. Such questions are
being asked more often given “the soviet mentality, the love for portraits of
Stalin and monuments to Lenin, the hatred to Ukraine as such ... and the
criminal situation” in these two oblasts.
Shiropayev points out that “the
Donbas and the Luhansk area always will be problematic regions, a kind of
soviet Ulster which will threaten the very existence of Ukraine.” That is not the kind of “European trend” that
Ukrainians want to be a part of. And before Ukraine can move forward, it must
restore order in those two territories not make promises about referenda.
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