Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct.
20 – Ukraine’s revolution of dignity was not about decolonization and control
over territory but about an alternative civilizational choice that sought to
make Ukraine a European rather than a Eurasian country, a choice that many
Ukrainians although far from all support to this day, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
Thus, that
revolution, the London-based Russian analyst says, was far more than about
territory and security, something many in Ukraine and the West have now
forgotten but something that is why Putin has reacted in the way he has and why
territorial concessions to him won’t guarantee Ukraine’s future (echofm.online/opinions/ukrainskaya-vandeya).
That can be
achieved “only by clear and forceful countermeasures that will convincingly
demonstrate to Putin that his achievement of his initial goals in this war is
unrealistic” now and will remain unrealistic in the future, Pastukhov argues.
“Anyone who thinks otherwise is a naïve romantic.”
“In 2014,”
he continues, he “published a book entitled The Ukrainian Revolution and the
Russian Counter-Revolution about the challenges Ukraine faced. One of its central
ideas was that “attempts to hold the Donbass by force would inevitably come
into direct conflict with the goals of the revolution of dignity.”
At that
time, Pastukhov says, he argued that such attempts would lead to a full-scale
war and that “war is not the best time for realizing the ideals of freedom and
democracy.” Now a decade later, he offers an additional one: “the revolution of
dignity … was not about decolonization but about the European choice of the
Ukrainian people.”
Had it been
only about decolonizing, control of territory would have been everything
because that could have been achieved without fundamental changes in Ukraine.
But most Ukrainians understood their choice differently, “as one in favor of
other values and principles” than those Moscow had insisted on.
However,
“even if this was the choice of the majority, Pastukhov says, it clearly was not
then and is not now the choice of everybody” in Ukraine. In fact, “a sizeable
part of the Ukrainian people wanted to return to the comfortable USSR,” and
that was the basis of the split between those who supported the revolution of
dignity and those who did not.
And this
was and is the real dividing line in Ukraine, the London-based Russian analyst
says. And consequently, “the problem is not that ‘Russians’ lived in Crimea or
the Donbass but that the majority of those living there were people who wanted
to return to the traditional Soviet past.”
Prior to
the revolution of dignity, he says, Russia was apparently committed to a
European course while Ukraine was not and those in Ukraine who did not want to follow
that course were quite happy to remain in Ukraine. “But when the roles were reversed,”
such people “suddenly began to yearn for their ‘historical homeland.’”
Consequently,
he continues, “the southeast of
Ukraine is the Ukrainian Vendée. And even if, at the cost of incredible efforts
and sacrifices, Ukraine recovers control over these territories, it will also
get back all the old problems that will push back for decades the
implementation of the choice made by the Ukrainian people in favor of the
European path of development.”
The majority of Ukrainians who
continue to favor the goals of the revolution of dignity should be focusing on
that rather than expending lives and treasure on recovering something that will
only compromise their ability to achieve what they really want, the
London-based analyst concludes.