Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 2 – In 1991,
Ukrainians separated themselves “not from Russia but from Moscow,” as shown by the
continuing willingness of most to speak Russian, historian Georgy Mirsky says.
Indeed, at that time, “no one except Bandera supporters separated themselves off
from Russia or from the Russian people.”
But now, the Russian historian
acknowledges, the situation has changed. Ukrainians in Kyiv in the wake of
Moscow’s intervention in southeastern Ukraine are choosing to speak Ukrainian,
an indication that Russia may have “acquired Crimea but we have lost Ukraine.
Which, he asks, is “more important?” (echo.msk.ru/blog/georgy_mirsky/1429814-echo/).
When a recent Russian visitor to the
Ukrainian capital told him that “everyone is speaking Ukrainian in the streets,”
Mirsky says he has “difficulty imagining such a Kyiv,” given that in his past
visits even since 1991, Ukrainians spoke Russian “without a single exception”
and spoke it just as well as any Muscovite.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated,
he continues, Ukrainians like other peoples in the region fled from Moscow
which had become “a symbol” for them as for others of “empire.” But “no one in Ukraine” fled from Russia or
the Russian people until now. And they have done so not only for a long time
but perhaps forever.
Mirsky says that he “understands now
why people say that in Ukraine there is a ban on watching Russian federal
channels: if I were a Ukrainian,” he suggests,” and had to listen to what these
channels say about Ukrainians, he would do the same even though he feels no
particularly warm feelings for the current Ukrainian government.
The Russian
historian’s observation is more important than it might strike some at first
glance. Most journalistic commentaries
regularly speak about the division between Western Ukraine and the rest of that
country, between a Ukrainian nationalist region and a Russian speaking one.
But more
scholarly analysts focus on what they describe as a tripartite division of
Ukraine, among the Ukrainian-speaking and very nationalist Ukrainians of the
West, the Russian-speaking and less nationalist Ukrainians of Kyiv and the center,
and the Russian-speaking Russians and Ukrainians in the east.
Moscow never won the sympathies of
Western Ukraine – its inclusion in the Soviet Union was one of Stalin’s biggest
mistakes because people there continued to resist from the 1940s to the end of
Soviet times – but Russia had won over at least in part many of the Ukrainians
in the central regions.
That gave Moscow the leverage it
needed to control Ukraine. Now, to the extent that the shift Mirsky is pointing
to has occurred – and there is a great deal of evidence that he is correct –
Moscow has lost that tool. Indeed, one can say that if Ukraine acquired state
independence in 1991, it is now acquiring national independence – and both
times because of Moscow’s mistakes.
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