There had never been an Ukrainian nation state until the last twenty five years. The boundaries of the old Soviet Socialist Republics were never intended to define nation states, and indeed were in part designed to guard against forming potentially dangerous cohesive units. The Ukrainians are a nation and f they wish are certainly entitled to a state, but that its borders must be those defined, and changed several times, by the Soviet Union for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is not axiomatic.
It is not true that there is a general desire for secession for Ukraine on the linguistic and broadly West East split. It is true that key political attitudes do correlate closely to the linguistic split, with Russian speakers identifying with the ousted government, and favouring closer ties with Russian over closer ties with the West, while Ukrainian speakers overwhelmingly favour EU integration. But that does not translate into a general desire by the Russian speakers to secede from a Ukraine that goes the other way. The key to this is that two thirds of Russian speaking Ukrainian nationals view themselves as ethnically Ukrainian, not Russian. Only a third of Russian speakers, a sixth of the general population, regard themselves as ethnically Russian. It does appear to be true that among those who view themselves as ethnically Russian, there is a significant desire for union with Russia, and that there is probably a majority in some Eastern provinces for that idea, probably including Crimea. But the area involved is far smaller than the linguistically Russian area.
Ethnicity is of course a less tangible concept than linguistic identity, and has little claim to objective reality, particularly in an area with such turbulent history of population movement. But it is futile to pretend it has no part in the idea of a nation state, and is best regarded as a cultural concept of self-identification.
The historical legacy is extremely complex. Kievan Rus was essential to the construction of Russian identity, but for Russia to claim Kiev on that basis would be like France claiming Scandinavia because that is where the Normans came from. Kievan Rus was destroyed and or displaced by what historical shorthand calls the Mongal hordes, almost a millennium ago. Ukrainian history is fascinating, the major part of it having been at various times under Horde, Lithuanian, Polish, Krim Tartar, Galician, Cossack Federation, Russian and Soviet rule.
Still just within living memory, one in seven Ukrainians, including almost the entire intellectual and cultural elite, was murdered by Stalin. An appalling genocide. Like Katyn a hundred times over. That is the poisonous root of the extreme right nationalism that has rightly been identified as a dangerous element in the current revolution. Pro-western writers have largely overlooked the fascists and left wing critics have largely overlooked Stalin. His brutal massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Krim Tartar is also relevant – many were forcibly deported to Uzbekistan, and I have heard the stories direct.
Having served in the British Embassy in Poland shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I regard as blinkered those who deny that membership of the European Union would be a massive advantage to Ukraine. In 1994 there was very little difference in the standard of living in both countries – I saw it myself. The difference is now enormous, and that really means in the standard of living of ordinary working people. Poland’s relationship with, and eventual membership of, the European Union has undoubtedly been a key factor. Those who wish Ukraine instead to be linked to the raw commodity export economy of Putin’s Russia are no true friends of the working people. Ukraine’s accidental boundaries include, of course, the great formerly Polish city of Lvov.
Ukraine is an accidental state and its future will be much brighter if it is a willing union. It needs not just Presidential and Parliamentary elections, but also a federal constitution and a referendum on whether any of its provinces would prefer to join Russia. That can give an agreed way forward to which Russia might also subscribe, and defuse the current crisis. It would suit the long term interest of both the Ukraine and the West. I fear however that the politicians will be too macho to see it.
On topic –
http://world.time.com/2014/02/26/ukraine-donbass-yanukovych-kurkov/
Don’t shoot the messenger; this looks balanced, and gives some background…also a couple of good comments.
‘(Putin’s) applying the same atavistic standards to Ukraine — rather than exploring new economic models that could create economic development and assuaging historical Russian-Ukrainian divisions — he insists on a union with his torpid kleptocracy and Russian dominance. The frequently shirtless Putin doesn’t seem to appreciate the subtleties of seduction, he seems convinced that mere muscularity is all that’s needed.
These are the struggles of a second-rate intellect with modernity.’
OTOH –
‘None of this lesses the stupidity of Americans who yearn for another major “enemy” in Russia, moved NATO eastward rather than disbanding it and encouraged the unrealistic ambitions of Georgians and Ukrainians who want to join NATO — and plans to put destabilizing missiles near Russia’s borders.’
“From old Soviet practice, all official documents separate your citizenship and your ethnicity, and everyone understands what is being understood perfectly well.”
Your last clause there is too elliptical for me to understand.
I suspect, but haven’t checked, that the practice dates back to Tsarist times, although in those days they would have used ‘subjecthood’ (подданство) rather than ‘citizenship’.
The distinction between ‘subjecthood’ and ‘citizenship’ is still sometimes employed in Russia to differentiate between the status of say British ‘subjects’ on the one hand and French or US ‘citizens’ on the other.
I’m not sure whether your official duties ever took you to the USSR, but when Brits stayed in that country back in the day, they were advised by British authorities to record both their citizenship and nationality as ‘British’.
‘English’, ‘Scottish’, ‘Welsh’, and ‘Cornish’ were all out! Verboten! ‘Jedi’ probably would have been frowned on too!
I wonder what Kim Philby put in his Soviet passport – ‘British’ or ‘English’? 🙂
“Forgive me, it is ten years since I spoke Russian and I have forgotten the two terms, and whic is which. I have a vague recollection it is something like narodnosh and gradzvanstva, though the second I could be completely wrong about.”
You remember well! The passport terms are citizenship (grazhdanstvo – гражданство) and nationality (natsional’nost’ – национальность).
The word narodnost’ (народность) is sometimes translated as ‘nationality’ but is roughly equivalent to ‘national spirit’, and wasn’t used on passports. Along with autocracy and orthodoxy, it was one of the pillars of the Tsarist regime. Funny how a number of state entities get described in terms of pillars, including the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the EU.
(Wikipedia have down an awful job on that one, almost making pillarisation equivalent to ‘power-sharing’. The internet is where petty purveyors of ‘a little knowledge’ meet with the denizens of Christmas ’round robin’ land!)
As for ‘ethnicity’, let’s leave that to the State of Israel, which writes on its citizens’ documents their ‘ethno-religious’ identity, allowing the police and all other official bodies to distinguish between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims without being able to distinguish in the same way between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. Nobody is allowed to have their ethno-religious identity recorded as ‘Arab Jew’ – nor, for that matter, as ‘Jewish Christian’ or simply as ‘Israeli’.
The question of banned identities is an interesting one.
Tennis-player Serena Williams presumably gives significant importance to her ‘Crip’ identity, but got a lot of flak for doing the ‘Crip walk’ in front of the Tories…I mean in front of the All-England Club officials at Wimbledon.
I heard of a very few people in the USSR having ‘Gypsy’ (Цыган) recorded as their passport nationality, but that may have been a myth.
‘Cossack’ is certainly an ethnicity, but I doubt that it has ever been allowed to be recorded as a passport nationality. In the Polish and west-Ukrainian area, the ‘Szlachta’ were also a peculiar group. Friedrich Nietsche wanted to be from those origins, but people say he was a fake.
‘Cossack’ is, to judge by the experience of most of us who come to this blog, a ‘weird’ ethnicity – and a vivid illustration that if a person is intellectually honest and aware enough to want to hone their definitions to the max (and that’s exactly what we should want to do – to get to “definitions so rigorous that no tyranny can withstand them”), then they have got to accept that the same definitions of ‘ethnicity’, ‘nationality’, etc. etc. cannot reasonably be imposed on everybody everywhere.
It really does suggest at least the remnants of an imperialist outlook to believe otherwise.
People should be able to agree with that statement even if they don’t agree (yet) with what people like me say about getting rid of all national and nationalist feelings.
In any case, nation-building has in many cases gone hand-in-hand with imperialism, since Woodrow Wilson and before.
Most people who, shall we say, are the offspring of parents and grandparents who were born in Scotland and who lived in that country all their lives, and who themselves were brought up in Scotland but 10 or more years ago settled in England, view themselves as ‘Scottish’. If we change ‘Scotland’ and ‘England’ to ‘Ukraine’ and Russia’, the statement stops being true.
“All of the people to whom I refer put their citizenship as Ukrainian. Only one sixth of them put their ethnicity as Russian. Two thirds of Russian speaking Ukrainians put their ethnicity as Ukrainian.”
Yes, yes, but I was trying to get to the issue of why…and you won’t get a grip on that by saying…
“It is exactly analogous to people who speak English, but are nevertheless Welsh or Scottish.”
No it isn’t. You are just assuming that – and wrongly.
“It is just wrong to say all the Russian speakers are Russian, and certainly even more wrong to say they all want to secede to Russia.”
I agree. I am happy to let people define their own identities. But what is mistaken is to tell people that ‘national identity’ always means the same thing, because it doesn’t.
“The area where there is significant support for that is much smaller than the linguistic divide.”
Well, we have all seen some maps. One thing is for certain: only a small minority of people in any part of the Ukraine are getting out onto the streets waving blue and yellow flags.
Does this qualify as dramatic irony? Ukraine’s acting President Aleksandr Turchinov says the Crimean parliament has been seized by “criminals in military fatigues”.
After the events of the past week or so, that really did make me chuckle.
Ukraine continues flying apart , with the ethnic-Russians taking over the Crimean parliament, and calling for provincial autonomy while Moscow allows a defiant Yanukovych to reappear.
Apparently, the Crimea will go for independence if the Ukrainian President is not allowed to return to his office in the capital.
Putin is playing the crisis like a master.
If you are arguing from the idea that Russian speakers in the Ukraine (let’s say outside of the Crimea) are in an exactly analogous spread of positions to English speakers in Scotland, well at least we can both be glad that the ‘Gaelic mafia’ aren’t out on the streets carrying iron bars in Scotland!
If they ever did, how the English Defence League would applaud!
Ukrainian and Russian languages and identities merge into each other. Those who have sought to split them from each other and cause strife between them are arseholes. A lot of influence has been exerted by disgusting greedy aspiring asset-strippers in the US, UK, and Germany, who wield the foreign-policy instruments of those regimes. To say that is not in any way to defend the criminal regime in Russia.
Putin and Yanukovych are as corrupt as each other. Timoshenko is also a crook. So is Klitschko. Everybody in the region knows that. I am not some Anti-EU Little Brit, but to see people on demonstrations waving the EU flag in Kiev screams ‘fake’.
The level of understanding is higher than in the UK and Scandinavia – two places where most people still don’t quite suss that the public authorities are all a bunch of lying crooks. In most of the world, most people are practically born knowing that that’s true about the authorities everywhere. That was true in the Soviet period too, I might add.
Hence the great popular Russian word дерьмократия.
Old Mark lashes out at Craig:
“‘I am genuinely fond of the EU. I think it is the best place in the world to live, in very many ways.’
Most of the ‘best places’ to live in the EU (Denmark,Netherlands, Sweden), also happen to be monarchies. Wtf does that prove ?”
_______________________
It proves nothing, you Old Ass. Which is why Craig didn’t mention it. Capeeesh now?
@Trowbridge – so you reckon Putin’s playing it like a master, then? You may well be right.
Personally I think the KGB (FSR/FSB as now) hold a share in Wikileaks and Snowden too. There have been some really excellent releases of GCHQ documents by Glenn Greenwald recently. Not just ‘scandal’ stuff, but stuff that says a great deal about how society is controlled.
What’s your take on why events in the Ukraine have been allowed to occur during the Olympics?
Funny how the US bragged that they were going to send warships to defend Sochi and moaned that the Russians were being such a pain in the arse about it, and then, whaddayaknow, a US warship has a little accident in the Straits.
Incidentally, as Craig will almost certainly know, no non-Black Sea country has the right to keep warships in the Black Sea for longer than 21 days. That’s under the Treaty of Montreux. If they do, I think I’m right in saying that Turkey is supposed to be held to account.
Are you following the ‘credit card’ story in Turkey?
N_
“Sorry, what was the answer to the question
“why have you {ie, Craig }, all of a sudden, come out in favour US/EU (and UK) meddling into the internal affairs of another country?””
____________________________
Sorry, N_, but I don’t see anything in Craig’s post to justify you asking that question.
Why are you trying to put words into Craig’s mouth?
And why are you trying so hard to badmouth post-Communist Poland?
Why, you’ll be defending the Berlin Wall and the 1956 injvasion of Hungary next!
I was just repeating the question in the terms that someone else had asked it – someone who, unlike you, but like Craig and me, is probably here for honest reasons. I agree that the “all of a sudden” and “meddling” bits do put words into Craig’s mouth. If an apology is called for, I apologise. But the spirit of the question remains good.
Your trolling rubbish with regard to Budapest 1956 is pathetic and I will ignore it.
“The level of understanding is higher than in the UK and Scandinavia – two places where most people still don’t quite suss that the public authorities are all a bunch of lying crooks. In most of the world, most people are practically born knowing that that’s true about the authorities everywhere.”
______________________
Mmmm – perhaps why the UK and the Scandinavian countries have enjoyed great political stability compared to the “all public authorities are lying crooks” countries?
“Mmmm –”
Are you eating something?
“perhaps why the UK and the Scandinavian countries have enjoyed great political stability compared to the “all public authorities are lying crooks” countries?”
You are only stating the obvious. If a regime in Latin America or Southern or Eastern Europe had got people into debt to the extent that many people in Britain are in debt, there would have been major unrest by now. Here, people have just laid down and taken it, because Mr Poshy Sir either doesn’t mention it or says it’s good.
Don’t you get any social deference in your GCHQ doughnut, then, Habby? (Or should I call it a bagel?)
I think you’re spot on, Trowbridge. As soon as the ethnic Russians have cause to cry “Protect Us!” Vlad will have all the legitimacy he needs to steam in there. Russian will have its Black Sea access and the industrial heartlands; the bankrupt half of the country can then be chewed up by the IMF while the brownshirts smash everything up.
Thanks, Mike.
Don’t see Russian tanks just rolling into anywhere, like they did after the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and Akhazia- they will be invited in.
Do you happen to be the Mike I had some nice dissuasions with on Sweden’s The Local?
I don’t think to, THF. The world is full of Mikes.
Not interesting but amusing to read some hardcore leftists propaganda posts. Something we (in USSR) have been spoon fed since our brain was mature enough to understand words.
“Russian word дерьмократия” mentioned by one of them came out straight from Lubyanka’s (KGB headquarters) propaganda department.
Those hardcore leftists who support the power of International Law please chew this:
In 1994 Russia as well as US, UK and France signed the memorandum to support territorial integrity of Ukraine in return for Ukraine to disable its nuclear installations (similar was done with participation of Russia, US and China with regards to Kazakhstan).
But I guess in the world when International Law is as good as Constitution of Uzbekistan (who knows what I mean will sense the irony) everything is good in pursue of the gains.
Unfortunately, it is the US and the EU which have violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, organizing a plot to overthrow its elected government, like they have done in Egypt.
@Uzbek
The KGB are a big factor still, and not just in Russia.
If you think the word дерьмократия (for those who don’t know, this is a slightly amended version of the Russian word ‘democracy’, made into ‘shittocracy’) comes from the KGB, can you explain why they might have wanted to get people to believe that the new regime was just as corrupt and full of crap as the old regime?
How did they think that helped them achieve a security aim?
People just thought that anyway, because it was true.
The KGB had been mates with the mafia for years. It’s not as if they wanted to keep the old regime going forever.
If you think everyone ‘believed’ in the old regime when they lived under it, you’re wrong. Sure, they may have had its terminology rammed down their throats. That’s the same in every country, although that’s not to say that everywhere’s the same. Middle class people in the USSR couldn’t just up sticks and take what capital they had and go and start a business wherever they wanted. That’s why all the young well-off types wanted reform. Guess who they were the sons and daughters of?
Most people in the USSR thought the leadership were a gang of thieves, and they also thought the political changes were a big con.
They were right on both counts.
People watched the ‘reformers’ on the telly – at the same time as the stories about aliens landing in UFOs – and they saw them in the same light as they saw the ‘reactionaries’: namely, in terms of the началство (bosses), their lies, and their жульё (thieving).
By the way, do you think people in Kazakhstan or Uzkbekistan today are as contemptuous in public of Nazarbayev or Karimov as they often were in 1980s Russia about the four CPSU general secretaries of that decade? I think mostly the omnipotent secret police ensures they don’t. And lest anyone forget, both Nazarbayev and Karimov once sat on the CPSU’s Politburo in Moscow.
Old regime – bunch of thieves. New regime – bunch of thieves. And often the same thieves. People aren’t so stupid as not to know that.
Spetsnaz?
” Masked men with guns seized government buildings in the capital of Ukraine’s Crimea region on Thursday, barricading themselves inside and raising the Russian flag after mysterious overnight raids that appeared to be the work of militant Russian nationalists who want this volatile Black Sea region ruled from Moscow.”
N_
“I was just repeating the question in the terms that someone else had asked it – someone who, unlike you, but like Craig and me, is probably here for honest reasons.”
__________________________
Yes, I know you were repeating it. But why? What was your honest reason for repeating it?
And now I’ll repeat my question to you : why are you doing your honest level best to badmouth post-Communist Poland? Are you more sympathetic to the wonderful Polish People’s Republic? Why are so so pissed that Craig Murray finds post-Communist Poland happier, freer and better-off than Communist Poland?
We now have 3 Svoboda politicians in the new Ukraine parliament. Last year, the World Jewish Congress described this party as “neo Nazi”.
Yay! What a day for Western liberalism!
Or they good Nazis? I mean, guys we can do business with?
НУ ДА
Are you suggesting anarchy? Old is bad, new is bad. What is good then? Russia without jews as Russian chauvinists have been dreaming throughout centuries? remember Pogroms or Stalin’s purges? Russians have always been blaming someone else (preferably non-Russian(s)) in their problems. Why?
KGB is a big factor due to the insecurity dilemma in many former soviet republics including Russia. Their governments (or authoritarian presidents in most cases) are afraid of their own people more than external threats. External enemies are often made up to straighten internal security and closely watch the population. Remember Stalin’s SMERSH?
Putin’s rating shoot sky high only after the incidents when two houses in Moscow and one in Volgograd have been blown (allegedly by Chechens). Since then and Putin’s famous “if we find terrorist in toilet we will smash (zamochim) him there” his rocketed. But then claver minded KGB officer made sure that media (exactly like great Lenin prescribed) is under strict government control, so nowadays every single criticism of Mr Putin is equated to the (Vrag Naroda) Enemy of the People status.
Who knows Russians might indeed need Czar, But do Ukrainians need one?
Also 60% of the inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula are ethic Russians , about 1,200,000 people. And the proportion in Sevastopol is even higher, so there is no need for Russian special forces to get involved.
The West continues to make serious strategic mistakes by always underestimating the strength of its competitors or enemies.
The USSR would still be in business if sensible Gorby had not realized that the Rambo West might blow up the whole world if he had not thrown in the sponge.
Trowbridge H. Ford
USSR was a bankrupt state by 1991. If not Gorby its end might have been much worse- similar to Yugoslavia. Economic insolvency, rising nationalism within national republics, ideological bankruptcy, military demise after stalemate war in Afghanistan, galloping corruption (which by the way started in 1970th) have all contributed to the demise of USSR.
Communist party was morally and ideologically bankrupted by corrupt elites and failed economic theory.
The USA is a totally bankrupt state, but it is still able to attempt to take over the world, thanks to the fact that its creditors are its leading enemies, and the FR keeps printing loads of money.
The USSR could have kept going, thanks to its internal resources.
And Gorby threw in the sponge when he signed the 1987 arms treaty with loony Reagan, and embarked on his domestic reforms – what dictated not only the break up of the USSR but also the collapse of the communist regime in Moscow – what hardliners like Vladimir Krryuckov tried to atop but only learned of what was afoot until too late.
What seems like rather a complex geopolitical chess game in Ukraine becomes clearer when the clock is wound back to the Iraq war and Ukraine’s ties to Britain and America. Ukraine had the sixth-largest contingent in the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in Iraq after the United States, Britain, South Korea, Italy and Poland.
Russia had strongly opposed the UN sanctions maintained on Iraq after the Persian Gulf War and called on the UN to lift it. But the United States had strongly refused to support any lifting of the sanctions. Russia had strongly opposed the Iraq War and had refused to support military action against Iraq. President Vladimir Putin called it a serious mistake and said that only the United Nations can solve this dispute. Putin we realise in hindsight was right!
Clearly the Iraq war embryo in the minds of PNAC terrorists was fertilised in early 2000 and delivered by the false-flag events of 2001. Much like Iraq and her ‘lakes of oil’ the fate of Ukraine is linked with its dependence on Russian natural gas and the revenue garnered via its transport of that gas to Europe.
Yanukovych pissed off Putin by cutting a hydraulic fracturing deal with Chevron and Shell (remember Chevron placed its banner next to Nuland when giving her spiel at the National Press Club last December). To save his[Yanukovych] arse from a Putin at boiling point and the IMF economic hit-man, Yanukovych accepted Putin’s $3 billion down-payment to walk away from EU association and eventual integration.
Moving to 2005 Britain(Blair) and US behind-the-scenes role in Ukraine’s orange revolution came to light after a team of US doctors admitted it secretly treated the country’s new pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko for poisoning during his election campaign. In fact my in information tells me it was MI6 together with American secret services who arranged contamination of President Viktor Yushchenko blood samples followed by a media ‘broadcast’ including images of a disfigured Yushchenko, with words that he was poisoned on the orders of a Russian “political technologist” working for the Kremlin? The ‘poison’ being a form of agent Orange (how weird).
BBC News 22nd February 2005
Better off in EU? Umm NO. I guess you live in UK and do not see the hordes of Polish, Bulgarians and Romanians your country does not want? Have you not wondered why they come? For workers wages actually stagnates or deteriorate after EU expansion.
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2913&context=ilrreview
Social Failures of EU Enlargement: A Case of
Workers Voting with Their Feet.
Kazakhstan must be watching very carefully developments in Crimea. It too has over 40% of Slavic population of whom more than 37% of Russian origin and in northern Kazakhstan ethno balances in very much in favour of Slavs with 70% majority.
Precedent to current Crimean annexion and (most likely) future annexation of northern Kazakhstan was laid during Russian intervention to Georgia.
Bite one bullet and they will drop a bomb on you.
In a review of the takeover of Ukraine’s democratic government by machine-gun wielding fascists, Paul Craig Roberts (former US Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service, etc., etc.) concludes that those who applaud the outcome of US/EU intervention in Ukraine are either whores or fools who think reality consists in their delusions.