By Defining Ukraine as an ‘Anti-World that Must be Destroyed,’ Russians have Spiritual Bond They Want, Shusharin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 3 – By defining Ukraine as “an anti-world” that simultaneously must be denied and destroyed, Dmitry Shusharin argues, Russians have “acquired the spiritual bond.” And because Russian intellectuals had long promoted that definition, Russians found it easy to accept the Kremlin’s moves against Ukraine over the last eight years.

            “Many were struck by the rapid mental mobilization of the population” after 2014, the Russian historian and commentator says; “but this mobilization was prepared long ago.” And that made “the institutional legitimation of the war unnecessary.” It only had to be extended from the elites to the masses (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66AFDB23426AB).

            At the same time, he continues, over the last eight years, Russian Ukrainophobia has evolved. If at first it involved “jealousy of a competitor who was making his way into decent European society against the will of his father, now it involves hostility towards defectors to the enemy’s cap, to Europe and the community of civilized peoples.”

            And that means this: “the anti-Ukrainian psychosis” of Russians today “is not the result of propaganda and agitation. It was and is based on the non-recognition of the Ukrainians as a nation. Instead, Ukraine is the Unterrussland, the Ukrainian language is the Untersprache,” and Ukrainians both exist and must not.

            As a result, for many Russians now, “the European choice of Ukraine is considered an act of national betrayal, an attempt by some Russians to oppose themselves to all of Russia.” That makes what Ukraine and Ukrainians have done far more serious in the eyes of most Russians now.