Russia-Ukraine: Divide that lies deep in history
By Amitava Mukherjee While holding ‘Lenin and his associates’ responsible for the birth of Ukraine as a separate geographical identity, Vladimir Putin, the incumbent Russian President, has certainly failed to grasp the real message of history. Putin thinks that ‘Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by […]
By Amitava Mukherjee
While holding ‘Lenin and his associates’ responsible for the birth of Ukraine as a separate geographical identity, Vladimir Putin, the incumbent Russian President, has certainly failed to grasp the real message of history. Putin thinks that ‘Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory.’
Nothing can be further from the truth. The birth of Ukraine was not a sloppy decision but a fundamental part of the Bolshevik policy of ‘self-determination for the small nations’. Stalin, the Commissar of Nationalities, had outlined this policy in his ‘Marxism and the Nationalities’ in 1913. In it, he had championed the right of the peoples oppressed by the Tsarist Empire to self-determination, even to the point of breaking away from Russia and constituting independent States. True, the policy raised more confusion than it cleared.
A Patchy Decision
Sensing the quagmire that it may create in future, Lenin defended the policy in a masterly manner. Comparing it to women’s right to separate from their husbands, Lenin said, “We hardly mean to urge women to divorce their husbands, though we want them to be free to do so”. Basing on this policy, the republic of Ukraine was established on the principle of self-determination.
However, Lenin’s observations were relevant for the period he graced the Soviet scenario. Even the policy of self-determination as propounded by Lenin and Stalin was at best a patchy decision. They were only trying to hold together a disparate mass of humanity spread over a vast geographical area. It was inevitable that the objective situation would change with the passage of time. This moment arrived when Mikhail Gorbachev became the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The root of today’s Russia-Ukraine war goes back to the middle of the 1980s when Gorbachev had propounded his theory of Glasnost and Perestroika.
No Natural Boundaries
Serious studies, both in qualitative and quantitative terms, are now required to understand the future course of Russian as well as east European history. In all respect, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a turning point in the 21st century’s geopolitical scenario. The Russian landmass has been subjected to foreign invasions on several occasions. In the mid-13th century, the Mongols came from the East and easily conquered the Russian principalities. Much later, Napoleon came from the West. So did Hitler. At different points, the former Soviet Union and the present day Russia lack natural boundaries. That has made the present Russian leadership more wary about the West’s intentions. NATO’s eastward expansion has only provided the final spark.
There is at least another very important sociological cause that is working from within the Russian state apparatus, thus whetting the ambition of the ruling elite in Moscow towards the adoption of an imperial outlook in the light of the power and prestige that the former Soviet Union enjoyed. Although the West origin news outlets are speaking about demonstrations within Russia against Putin’s war efforts, such instances are not big in number. It is perhaps because, with the spread of urbanisation and education, a significant number of the Russian population conjure up in their vision the past Soviet Union with large numbers of smaller nationalities tightly held by Moscow with a great gravitational force.
The Russian landmass has been subjected to foreign invasions on several occasions – by the Mongols from the East in the mid-13th century, Napoleon from the West and also Hitler. NATO’s eastward expansion has only provided the final spark
This process has gone through a complex metamorphosis. The social conditions that had produced support for Lenin and Stalin had undergone significant changes since 1917. Around 1964, 25 million of the Soviet citizens had a high school education or better than that. In the mid-1980s, the figure reached 125 million. Even after long years of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet Union had a rural population of more than half of the country’s total population figure. In the late 1980s that figure had come down to about one quarter. In a word, an urban middle class had come into being. At a certain point in recent history, this section came out in support of Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika. But it soon became disillusioned at Boris Yeltsin’s weak-kneed capitulation before the United States and selling out of national assets. It has found a new ‘avatar’ in the shape of Vladimir Putin who tries to bring back not just the Soviet but Slav glory also.
Obviously, this has helped Putin speak from an imperialist angle. In his mind, he is perhaps seeking an answer to the cause of cessation of several ethnic nationality-based former Soviet republics from Russia after the dismemberment of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine is no exception. Both Lenin and Stalin understood this and that was the reason why the Soviet Union formulated the policy of self-determination for smaller nationalities. But their short-sightedness lay, in the words of Stalin, in their failure to engineer revolutions in those nationalities and in the absence of which all the powers were enjoyed by the national bourgeois there.
Part of the Whole?
For Putin, it will be difficult to contradict the assertion that the existence of Ukraine predates the Russian empire revolving around Moscow. Sometime in the 9th century AD, a group of Vikings established their mastery over the east Slavic communities of what is now northwest Russia. They called themselves Rus, then moved down the Dnieper river, established the city of Kyiv and made it their capital. This medieval state was called the Kyivan Rus. Moscow was then not in existence. It came up three centuries later.
Vladimir Putin’s claim that the Russians and the Ukrainians are one people is also mired in confusion. True, the settler Vikings had assimilated with the East Slavic people of modern-day Northwest Russia. Even the people of Rus used to speak a host of east Slavic dialects from which the Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Russian languages have evolved. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the Ukrainians had the misfortune of having been subjected to such ‘oneness’ in different periods of history. In the late 14th century the Grand Principality of Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania divided the Rus lands between themselves. Soon the latter got itself assimilated with Poland which imposed its own form of religion and serfdom on Ukrainian lands as a result of which Ukrainian Cossacks rose into rebellion against Polish rule in the mid-17th century and ultimately established an independent Cossack rule.
So before the establishment of the Soviet Union, Ukraine did not always remain a part and parcel of the Rus Empire. Stalin was certainly right in recognising Ukrainians as a different nationality, a different ‘people’ along with the Finns, Balts and hosts of others. Putin’s raison d’être perhaps comes from his own manner of interpreting history, one that had flowed from the actions of Czars and Czarinas. First Czarina Catherine the Great gobbled up vast stretches of Ukrainian territories from Poland. Then Czar Alexander II came down heavily on Ukrainian languages and resorted to its forced assimilation to Russian culture.
Ukrainian nationalism is nothing new as Isaac Deutscher, perhaps the most authentic biographer of Stalin, has noted that “mass collaboration with the enemy (German forces), especially in Ukraine and the Caucasus, resulted from grievances and resentments pent up since the thirties”
One thing is clear from the ongoing war. Just as Putin enjoys a good amount of support among the Russian elites and middle classes so does the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy among his own people in spite of the fact that he has failed to act on his electoral promise of reconciliation with the Russians.
Today, Russia is accusing Zelenskyy of having become a pawn at the hands of Ukrainian nationalist forces and here history provides us ample clues to the fact that Ukrainian nationalism is nothing new and the nationalists had collaborated with the German army out of intense hatred for Russians at the height of the Second World War. Isaac Deutscher, perhaps the most authentic biographer of Stalin, has noted that “mass collaboration with the enemy (German forces), especially in Ukraine and the Caucasus, resulted from grievances and resentments pent up since the thirties”. One of the reasons behind such grievances must have been Stalin’s collectivisation of farms programme that had ruined agriculture in the Soviet Union, an area of economic activity Ukraine had excelled in.
Stalin had a lurking fear that the Soviet Union might be outvoted in the United Nations and demanded that Ukraine and the Byelorussia be recognised as members of the UN with their own vote
The small nationalities had always given rise to a crisis of confidence among the Soviet leadership. Often it groped in the dark as to how to control, manage or manipulate the small nationalities so that big powers like England and America could not use them to destroy Soviet Union’s existence. Stalin was also a victim of such paranoia. At the fag end of the Second World War when the Big Three — the US, Britain and Russia — were discussing the future shape of the world order, Stalin had a lurking fear that the Soviet Union might be outvoted in the United Nations.
Suddenly he demanded that Ukraine and the Byelorussia be recognised as members of the United Nations with their own vote. His purpose was to increase the number of votes, even if artificially, that were sure to be cast in favour of Russia. To achieve this, he even effected a constitutional reform by which he abolished, albeit nominally, the principal tenet of the Soviet Constitution of 1924. The word Union of Soviet Republics was replaced by the word Federation. Each of the constituent republics could have its own army and foreign ministry.
Stalin’s Departure
However, at the core of their hearts both Lenin and Stalin were aware that the Soviet Union was a heterogeneous country, composed of many nationalities. Their policy of self-determination for small nations was undoubtedly correct. Lenin was careful enough not to cross the Rubicon while dealing with such a potentially explosive policy. Stalin, however, temporised, on some occasions he became opportunistic and invited nemesis for the Soviet Union.
Stalin talked of Federation in 1944 instead of ‘Union’ only to add numerical strength to his voting capacity by bestowing upon Ukraine and Byelorussia the status of separate nations, and it may not be unjust to conclude that 2022 is witnessing only the denouement of what he did in 1944
Neither Stalin nor the Soviet leadership that followed him could strike a chord with these small nationalities. Ukraine was no exception. Nationalist embers were smouldering there. That was the reason why the early Soviet leadership tried to strike a balance between the small nationalities’ urge for freedom and the need to hold the newly created Soviet Union together.
The idea was a federation with a concept of strong centralisation. Stalin himself had propagated the need for such a policy during the civil war of 1917-1923, departing from his earlier thesis of 1913 granting independence to smaller nationalities. But he was not at all sincere when he talked of Federation in 1944 only to add numerical strength to his voting capacity by bestowing upon Ukraine and Byelorussia the status of separate nations, meaning in effect that of a separate country. It may not be unjust to conclude that 2022 is witnessing only the denouement of what he did in 1944.
The intransigence of the Ukrainian Provisional Government, the so-called Rada, was the principal reason behind Stalin’s climbdown in the civil war ambience during the period 1917- 1923. Ataman Petlura, ‘commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces’, led active anti-Bolshevik military campaigns. Even the Ukrainian Rada had refused to allow the passage of Red troops through its territory to quell the armed rebellion led by the Cossack general Kaledin in the southern part of Russia during the civil war.
So, Ukraine always had a troubled history with Russia. That Vladimir Putin would find the existence of Ukraine as a gall and wormwood should cause no surprise.
(The author is a senior journalist and commentator)
Now you can get handpicked stories from Telangana Today on Telegram everyday. Click the link to subscribe.
Click to follow Telangana Today Facebook page and Twitter .
