To begin with, I am nor arguing with anybody. These are not polemical notes. I think that what such people as Inna Bohoslovska, Lilia Shevtsova, Hryhorii Perepelytsia, and Zbigniew Brzezinski have said lately is very important and valuable.
Nor do I suggest chasing the events. On the contrary, taking into account such headlong changes, it would be a good idea to stop and look around. Instead of revising answers to the upcoming questions, we should see whether we properly understand these questions and whether it is time to put them differently.
This text will be short and consist of some observations on the methods of studying the situation in Ukraine and her relations with Russia. It is worthwhile to begin with the main thesis – Ukraine is not Russia. As a doctor says in Chekhov’s short story A Nervous Breakdown, my dear, it is indisputable. But is Ukrainian identity really of an apophatic nature? In theology, apophaticism is definition of God by the principle “God is not…” But here it is just “not Russia.” Not Germany and not Vanuatu, either.
Formerly, the title of Leonid Kuchma’s book mirrored the content of a certain important stage in the making of the Ukrainian nation. But now I think this thesis is an obstacle on the road of this nation’s development and self-cognizance. My observations show that using it as argument in the debates on Ukraine’s future is an indication of some narrow-mindedness. A short time later this kind of self-identification will be defective and secondary with respect to another nation.
The danger of such cliches is that they are irrational, prejudicial, and hinder, in the long run, the choice of one’s own way in the original sense of these words. It seems to me this has already affected the developments in Ukraine, which have shown a serious difference of the Ukrainian national revolution from the eternal Russian upheavals whose mechanisms were best described by the putschist – not at all revolutionary – Lenin.
A Russian upheaval means seizing central power and the communications. Lenin thought that societal despair (“the lower classes do not want”) and inability of the elite to rule the state (“the higher classes are unable”) are the factors that are conducive to an upheaval. It is so at first glance. And this is applicable to Russia. But the motivation of national revolutions, which far from always swept away the previous government but, instead, formed the bizarre relations of hostile synthesis with the latter, was reduced to participation in the exercising of power. This needed confidence in one’s own social importance rather than impoverishment and despair. But for this, the upper classes would have continued to rule.
This is what we can see in Ukraine. Yanukovych and his clan are quite capable of ruling the country, and those who oppose them are by no means lumpens diffidently called “ordinary people.” In fact the strata that have formed their identity in the past few decades are striving to participate in ruling the state – above all, in identifying its position in the world.
From this angle, Ukraine is definitely not Russia. While the Ukrainian sociopolitical space has seen upward development in the past 15 years, the same space in Russia has only been degrading. Let us confine ourselves to a statement in this case.
The Ukrainian national revolution is viewed as a movement not so much for taking power, all the more so that the latter is a considerable puzzle (and its positioning is not as obvious as in Russia), as for winning its own space, place, territory. Such is the Maidan which is still unable to cross the borderline between the street and the corridors of power. And such are the occupied premises of regional administrations around which the protesters begin to put up barricades, which runs totally counter to the logic of their seizure. They are not regarded as communication centers (and there is no governance without communication), they look like territories free of the central authorities.
This outlines, in my view, the main paradox of the Ukrainian events, which must be sought neither in the Verkhovna Rada, nor in the Presidential Administration, nor even on the Maidan. The impression is that nobody wants to ask themselves a ticklish question about the nature of movement in the regions and districts of Ukraine: what do they show, what potential do they carry – of national consolidation or regional isolation and eventually separatism?
It seems to me that the latter assessment prevails in the Kremlin. We switch here to a very important subject also connected to the thesis “Ukraine is not Russia.” If it becomes a basis for self-identification, Russia will also be regarded as anti-Ukraine and the Kremlin’s goals will be defined as anti-goals of the Ukrainian national revolution. But what is true strategically is not always adequate tactically. In this case, the Kremlin’s strategic goal is that Ukraine should lose its status of a subject of international law. Regional face-off might well be a means to achieve this.
Putin and his team are past masters in turning an adversary to their advantage. Inside Russia, it is fighting corruption and maligning “the party of frauds and thieves,” as United Russia is dubbed, although this party is in realty a traditional autocratic method to use the plebs to curb the ambitions of boyars. And those Ukrainians who are occupying the buildings of regional administrations but do not pursue the goal of keeping the country united are Putin’s allies. Meanwhile, a Ukrainian federation – a true one, not a fake like in Russia – would be extremely objectionable for the Kremlin.
As for the central authorities, we should not delude ourselves, with due account of the Kremlin factor, that Yanukovych has not become a dictator so far. Firstly, it is “so far,” because the way he declared an amnesty testifies to his potential. Secondly, the Kremlin does not need at all a strong dictatorial rule in Kyiv. It does not need any viable government in Ukraine. For instance, Lukashenko seems to be “our dictator through and through.” But he only seems to be one. And he has found his options – he makes deals not so much with Putin as with Sechin.
And the last but not the least thing. I mean what I have been saying since when Yanukovych and Putin signed the agreements and what has been confirmed by the latest statements of Putin and his ministers. It is the 15-billion-dollar-worth trap, a trap for Ukraine and Europe. Some New York Times contributors admit this now:
“Even if Ukraine once again looks westward, there is no financial package ready to replace the Russian aid the Kremlin began offering in December. Without foreign assistance, Ukraine is all but certain to either default on its debt or devalue its currency… Its unpopularity with the protesters aside, the Russian aid has effectively stabilized the bond market.”
And now it will be necessary to prove that Europe is not Russia and European values and principles are not to be sold together with Ukraine’s European debt.
As for the catastrophe which Brzezinski prophesizes for Russia if she goes on pressing Ukraine, he is at least ten years or so late with this forecast. The Russian catastrophe has been around for a long time. For it is a catastrophe to steadily and purposefully strengthen the power of a regime that is implementing a traditional imperial scenario in order to thwart Russia’s national development. Every new victory of Putin, especially in international affairs, is another stage of this catastrophe.
