Revival of Prometheanism Outrages Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 31 – Prometheanism, a Polish policy in the 1920s and 1930s directed at weakening Moscow’s control of its Western borderlands, has now spread into the former Soviet republics along Russia’s Western borderlands and is intended to weaken Moscow’s control of non-Russian areas within the current borders of the Russian Federation, Vladislav Gulevich says.

            An obvious and odious example of this is the Promethean Center for Security Research in Lviv – see the Center’s website at prometheus.ngo/ -- according to the Moscow Strategic Culture Foundation analyst (fondsk.ru/news/2021/11/05/ideologia-podryva-rossijskoj-gosudarstvennosti-podbiraetsja-k-rossii-54840.html).

            The main focus of the Center, Gulevich says, is on Ukraine and the Baltic-Black Sea region, and so it is not surprising that it is backed by groups in Ukraine, Poland and Canada all of which hope to weaken Moscow by promoting non-Russian nationalism inside the borders of the Russian Federation.

            (Since 1991, Kyiv has devoted attention on Ukrainian communities in the Russian Federation, the so-called “wedges” like the “green” one in the Amur region (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/kyiv-takes-up-cause-of-ukrainian-far.html). And in 2019, the Verkhovna Rada directed Kyiv to support all non-Russians against Moscow (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/05/ukrainian-parliament-calls-for-new.html).)

            According to the Moscow commentator, the very name of the Lviv center shows its ideological links to pre-war Polish Prometheanism, which believed that just as Prometheus brought fire to humankind, Prometheanism could bring “the fire of freedom to the peoples of Russia” and “liberate them from the tyranny of Moscow rulers.”

            Gulevich quotes from the writings of Yagellonian University professor Andjei Novak on this idea and its current manifestations to the east of Poland (polskieradio.pl/397/8260/Artykul/2578648,О-польском-Прометее-несущем-огонь-свободы-порабощенным-Россией-народам).

            According to the Moscow writer, “the Promethean Center in Lviv occupies itself with provoking discord among the peoples of the Russian Federation, casting doubt on the federative status of the Russian state, coming up with ‘facts’ of the oppression of non-Russians … and attempting to consolidate national activists in Russia for organizing ‘national resistance.’”

            He suggests that among the sympathizers of Prometheanism are Mirchi Snegura in Moldova, Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia, as well as Petro Poroshenko and Wolodomy Zelensky in Ukraine, people who have been behind the promotion of “civil wars” in Transdniestria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and the Donbass.

            Canadian support for the Lviv Center is “no accident,” Gulevich continues. “Ottawa is a competitor of Moscow in the Arctic and hopes to use the idea of the violation of the rights of the Northern Peoples of the Russian Federation as a hybrid weapon” against Moscow in the Far North.