Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 17 – Two new
commentaries, one about Russia’s refusal to enter into any larger political
structure in 1991 if Ukraine refused to take part and a second about the
propensity of Ukrainians to view Russians as a fraternal people even now after
Moscow invaded their country and seized Crimea highlight the highly fraught
ties between the two peoples.
In a commentary on Kasparov.ru,
Russian analyst Andrey Illarionov argues that “the main cause for the taking of
the decision about the disintegration of the USSR and rejecting the idea of
founding a Union of Sovereign States … was the principled and uncompromising decision
of the Russian authorities not to participate in [such a] project without the
participation in it of Ukraine” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=58540E5FC4C09).
And that outcome was not driven by
the results of the December 1, 1991, Ukrainian referendum but “at a minimum” by
decisions taken a week earlier. Boris Yeltsin, for example, said on November 25th
that as long as Ukraine doesn’t sign a political treaty, “Russia will not put
its signature to it either” (yeltsincenter.ru/digest/release/krakh-ssg-krakh-gorbacheva).
That
conclusion is confirmed, Illarionov suggests, not only by Ukrainian leader
Leonid Kravchuk’s statement that Yeltsin understood that “’without Ukraine …
there will not be a Union’” (republic.ru/posts/73137) but also by Mikhail Gorbachev’s remark that he
couldn’t imagine “a Union without Ukraine” (ru-90.ru/node/501).
At
the end of November 1991, seven republics were ready to sign a treaty on the
formation of a Union of Sovereign States; but Ukraine was not among them and so
Russia wasn’t either and nothing came of this last attempt to form at least a
confederal relationship among the union republics.
“Why
did the Russian leadership reject the participation of Russia in [such a state
formation] without Ukraine?” the Moscow commentator says. A recent interview given by Gennady Burbulis
to Radio Liberty came close when he said that a Union without Ukraine was “completely
impermissible” (svoboda.org/a/28165252.html).
Unfortunately,
before Yeltsin’s chief ideologist could complete his thought on this subject,
he was interrupted by his interviewer and did not return to it, Illarionov
says. But while Burbulis did not have the chance to speak to this point and
Illarionov doesn’t either, there are at least three obvious reasons.
First,
a union of any kind in which Russia was dominant but Ukraine was outside would
be one in which demographically the Slavs would not be much better off than
they were in the USSR at the end and the Muslims would be a much larger share. That
would mean that Russia would be forced to turn even more away from Europe than
otherwise.
Second,
a union without Ukraine would undermine Russian views about the origin of the Russian
state and culture given the obsession with the baptism of Kievan Rus as the
supposed beginning of the Russian state
and would almost certainly, as indeed it has, lead to efforts by Moscow to “retake”
Ukraine.
And
third, and again the echoes of this are still being heard, the existence of an
independent Slavic country in the form of Ukraine would exacerbate centrifugal
forces within Russia, sparking more regionalism and even separatism among those
the Kremlin defines as ethnic Russians but who view themselves as distinct.
The
second commentary is offered by Tara Klochko in Kyiv’s “Delovaya stolitsa”
newspaper concerning recent poll results showing that just over half of
Ukrainians still view Russians as “a fraternal people” (dsnews.ua/politics/bratskaya-voyna-kak-izbavitsya-ot-nazoylivogo-brata-v-golovah-16122016200000).
One of the most beloved themes of
Soviet propagandists was the notion that Russians and Ukrainians were “fraternal
peoples,” an idea that even “military aggression, occupation of part of the
country, and other ‘delights’ of the Russian world” have not succeeded in
driving out of the heads of Ukrainians.
According to the latest Razumkov
center poll, 51.1 percent of Ukrainians still consider the Russians a fraternal
people, 33.8 percent don’t, and another 15.2 percent either can’t or won’t say.
At one level, these results are shocking given what Russia has done to Ukraine
over the last three years.
But at another, Klochko says, “there
is nothing particularly surprising in such results.” A poll taken earlier this year found that 67
percent of Ukrainians had a good or very good attitude toward Russians, and
only 21.5 percent had a bad or very bad one, even though they had an overwhelmingly
negative attitude toward Putin, with only eight percent viewing him positively.
One reason that idea of “fraternal
peoples” has survived is because it can be interpreted to mean so many things;
but that doesn’t mean that its survival in the heads of Ukrainians is not a
matter of concern for those who care about the survival and flourishing of the Ukrainian
nation and state.
A major reason for that conclusion,
Klochko suggests, is that that the notion that there is a bad Putin but good
Russians, “absolutely mirrors the thesis actively spread now by Russian
propaganda about the bad ‘Kyiv Banderite junta’ and the on the whole not bad
fraternal Ukrainians,” an idea Moscow uses to weaken Ukrainian support for the
Ukrainian state.
Thus, the idea that Ukrainians and
Russians are “fraternal peoples” must be fought because “it is one of the constantly
repeated propagandistic myths which does not have anything in common with
reality: Russians overwhelmingly support Putin’s aggressive plans toward
Ukraine” and don’t view Ukraine as a permanent reality.
The Ukrainian government and the
Ukrainian media should be countering this every day, Klochko says. But “unfortunately,
even patriotic television channels concentrate more on domestic scandals” than
on this, something for which they may ultimately suffer if this attitude is
allowed to continue.
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