Ukraine, between two worlds
20 years have passed since the Ukrainian people got rid of the iron grip of Soviet imperialism. Or did they? 2 decades of parliamentary democracy, 20 years since the Rada, their parliament, adopted the Constitution of the new independent country. But despite that, the biggest country in Europe (in terms of territory, and excluding Russia) is still at a crossroads like it was 20 years ago. Still spinning in one place. Still torn between its traditionally nice relations with Big Brother the Russian Bear and the alluring mystery of the promised shores of the West. In fact if we look at the chronology of those lands, Kievan Rus should be considered the first direct ancestor of Ukraine, so Ukraine is the first East-Slavonic country in that sense (I'm excluding the older South-Slavonic states on the Balkans). But soon the Muscovitan principality turned into the Russian Kingdom, then into the Russian Empire, and kept increasing its power, leaving its older bro behind.
This asymmetrical relationship gives some historic explanation for the turbulent past of Ukraine, spanning a millennium of bloodshed, internal division and a string of foreign invaders. Ukraine was born in blood, and had it rough from Day One. The first big trouble came with the invasion of the eastern Mongol hordes, then the advancing Polish-Lithuanian knights from the west, until eventually most of Ukraine was swallowed by the Russian Empire of Peter I. And after the Bolshevik revolution that destroyed the last Tsarist ambitions, the Ukrainian people had just 4 years to enjoy their freedom, because the Soviets came in 1922 and Ukraine was instantly integrated into the USSR. Then an active policy of Russification of the Ukrainians followed, including such nice episodes like Stalin's Holodomor, and Moscow went to tremendous lengths to erase the Ukrainian identity and appropriate Ukraine's ancient heritage.
It's these turbulent transformations that define today's cultural division among the Ukrainian people, and they cause the sensitivity and uncertainty in the internal political direction of the country for the last 20 years. Because Ukraine is only nominally independent. In reality, it has been jumping from one extreme to another, unable to find its right place.
After the collapse of USSR the first Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk was looking at Kremlin with suspicion. But his successor Leonid Kuchma deliberately brought the country back into the sphere of powerful Russian influence. So Ukraine, which by territory is the size of Texas (and by population double the size of Texas), and which for centuries has played an important historical role as the granary of a number of empires from Rome to the Soviets, in less than a decade was degraded into the private domain of a gang of newly forged oligarchs, who unscrupulously divided the Ukrainian land and treasures between themselves. Under Kuchma, corruption increased at such rate that the world started seeing Ukraine as a land of crime and shady dealings between local "businessmen" that made the cheapest Hollywood crime movies look like Academy Awards material.
There's no doubt that seeing their country in such a dire condition, a large part of the Ukrainians were longing to break the Russian chains and turn toward the West. And just then Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko appeared on the scene, and became the heart and soul of the bloodless Orange Revolution. For weeks in a row during the 2004 winter the world was wondering if a bloody civil war would break out between West Ukraine, Yushchenko's bastion, and the eastern regions where the majority of the 8 million ethnic Russians live. Fortunately, the folk dressed in orange t-shirts, waving orange flags and balloons, didn't cause any riots, but they clearly showed how the country was divided in two. The people in the western part, mostly agricultural, ethnically Ukrainian and pro-western, became the symbol of the struggle for independence, and that struggle was centered in and around the central "Maidan" square. They rose against Putin's invisible dictatorship, against the oligarchs who we in control of their country, and the sad attempts for imitating a democracy. Meanwhile, the industrial East insisted on maintaining the traditionally friendly relations with Moscow, and supported the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich.
The situation is even more complicated with the pearl in the Ukrainian crown - the Crimea peninsula on the Black Sea coast. Politically it belongs to Ukraine, but in reality it's the stronghold of the Russian population, and it enjoys an autonomy. And Sevastopol serves as a home to the Russian Black Sea navy for more than 200 years.
Eventually, in the heat of the intense presidential campaign, after narrowly averting death by poisoning, Yushchenko survived, and despite his damaged face (which became another symbol of the anti-Russian resistance), he won the election and became a national hero. But as soon as he took the steering wheel, he instantly collided with a number of challenges that couldn't be solved with a magic wand. The impotent economy of the country, the raging criminal groups of the wealthy clans, the deeply inbred corruption in the state system and the quarrels between the political allies who had helped him to take power, were only part of all the troubles he had to go through. The people's hopes for a national revival soon collapsed under the corruption scandal where Yushchenko had to fire his most popular ally, the gorgeous Yulia Tymoshenko, the Oil Queen.
He came with an ambitious plan for reforms and a promise to "clean the house", but eventually he was incapable of compromising even with his most reliable partner.
And in 2010 as the new presidential elections approached, the country again hang at the abyss. It was unclear if Yushchenko's cabinet had managed to overcome the deep division in his nation. Not just religious and cultural but also social and economic gaps coupled with rising nostalgia for the Soviet past were threatening the integrity of the country. The people in the industrial East were feeling increasingly nostalgic for their factories that used to spew suffocating smoke into the sky during Soviet times. And they were ready to make an unequal deal with Russia, to surrender their sovereignty in exchange for a dose of temporary financial stability.
These morbid moods determined the failure of Yushchenko's efforts to bring his country into the structures of NATO, and possibly closer to the EU. Ukraine's dependence on Russian resources additionally undermines this possibility. This became evident in the cold winter of 2009 when Moscow decided to stop the transit gas running through Ukraine. This aggravated the political crisis inside the country and determined the outcome in the presidential election, where the pro-Russian Yanukovich took power again and became the new president. He immediately extinguished the sparkles between Kyiv and Moscow. As a sign of good will to Putin/Medvedev, and to remove the energy fears in Ukraine, he made a deal with the Russians. He agreed to extend the lease contract for the Sevastopol military base until 2024, and in return he got a 30% discount on the Russian gas. A good price from a business POV. Meanwhile, the behavior of the new regime quickly buried the ambitions of the pro-Western part of Ukraine, the hopes for NATO membership were gone, and the country was again brought back into the Russian sphere of influence.
Everything shows that Ukraine will continue its centuries-old tradition of swinging between the East and West and back again, wondering which way to take. The question now is when the Ukrainian people will run out of patience again and will flood the Maidan square, and scream again in favor of democracy and independence. But I'm not so sure it will be as bloodless this time.
This asymmetrical relationship gives some historic explanation for the turbulent past of Ukraine, spanning a millennium of bloodshed, internal division and a string of foreign invaders. Ukraine was born in blood, and had it rough from Day One. The first big trouble came with the invasion of the eastern Mongol hordes, then the advancing Polish-Lithuanian knights from the west, until eventually most of Ukraine was swallowed by the Russian Empire of Peter I. And after the Bolshevik revolution that destroyed the last Tsarist ambitions, the Ukrainian people had just 4 years to enjoy their freedom, because the Soviets came in 1922 and Ukraine was instantly integrated into the USSR. Then an active policy of Russification of the Ukrainians followed, including such nice episodes like Stalin's Holodomor, and Moscow went to tremendous lengths to erase the Ukrainian identity and appropriate Ukraine's ancient heritage.
It's these turbulent transformations that define today's cultural division among the Ukrainian people, and they cause the sensitivity and uncertainty in the internal political direction of the country for the last 20 years. Because Ukraine is only nominally independent. In reality, it has been jumping from one extreme to another, unable to find its right place.
After the collapse of USSR the first Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk was looking at Kremlin with suspicion. But his successor Leonid Kuchma deliberately brought the country back into the sphere of powerful Russian influence. So Ukraine, which by territory is the size of Texas (and by population double the size of Texas), and which for centuries has played an important historical role as the granary of a number of empires from Rome to the Soviets, in less than a decade was degraded into the private domain of a gang of newly forged oligarchs, who unscrupulously divided the Ukrainian land and treasures between themselves. Under Kuchma, corruption increased at such rate that the world started seeing Ukraine as a land of crime and shady dealings between local "businessmen" that made the cheapest Hollywood crime movies look like Academy Awards material.
There's no doubt that seeing their country in such a dire condition, a large part of the Ukrainians were longing to break the Russian chains and turn toward the West. And just then Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko appeared on the scene, and became the heart and soul of the bloodless Orange Revolution. For weeks in a row during the 2004 winter the world was wondering if a bloody civil war would break out between West Ukraine, Yushchenko's bastion, and the eastern regions where the majority of the 8 million ethnic Russians live. Fortunately, the folk dressed in orange t-shirts, waving orange flags and balloons, didn't cause any riots, but they clearly showed how the country was divided in two. The people in the western part, mostly agricultural, ethnically Ukrainian and pro-western, became the symbol of the struggle for independence, and that struggle was centered in and around the central "Maidan" square. They rose against Putin's invisible dictatorship, against the oligarchs who we in control of their country, and the sad attempts for imitating a democracy. Meanwhile, the industrial East insisted on maintaining the traditionally friendly relations with Moscow, and supported the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich.
The situation is even more complicated with the pearl in the Ukrainian crown - the Crimea peninsula on the Black Sea coast. Politically it belongs to Ukraine, but in reality it's the stronghold of the Russian population, and it enjoys an autonomy. And Sevastopol serves as a home to the Russian Black Sea navy for more than 200 years.
Eventually, in the heat of the intense presidential campaign, after narrowly averting death by poisoning, Yushchenko survived, and despite his damaged face (which became another symbol of the anti-Russian resistance), he won the election and became a national hero. But as soon as he took the steering wheel, he instantly collided with a number of challenges that couldn't be solved with a magic wand. The impotent economy of the country, the raging criminal groups of the wealthy clans, the deeply inbred corruption in the state system and the quarrels between the political allies who had helped him to take power, were only part of all the troubles he had to go through. The people's hopes for a national revival soon collapsed under the corruption scandal where Yushchenko had to fire his most popular ally, the gorgeous Yulia Tymoshenko, the Oil Queen.
He came with an ambitious plan for reforms and a promise to "clean the house", but eventually he was incapable of compromising even with his most reliable partner.
And in 2010 as the new presidential elections approached, the country again hang at the abyss. It was unclear if Yushchenko's cabinet had managed to overcome the deep division in his nation. Not just religious and cultural but also social and economic gaps coupled with rising nostalgia for the Soviet past were threatening the integrity of the country. The people in the industrial East were feeling increasingly nostalgic for their factories that used to spew suffocating smoke into the sky during Soviet times. And they were ready to make an unequal deal with Russia, to surrender their sovereignty in exchange for a dose of temporary financial stability.
These morbid moods determined the failure of Yushchenko's efforts to bring his country into the structures of NATO, and possibly closer to the EU. Ukraine's dependence on Russian resources additionally undermines this possibility. This became evident in the cold winter of 2009 when Moscow decided to stop the transit gas running through Ukraine. This aggravated the political crisis inside the country and determined the outcome in the presidential election, where the pro-Russian Yanukovich took power again and became the new president. He immediately extinguished the sparkles between Kyiv and Moscow. As a sign of good will to Putin/Medvedev, and to remove the energy fears in Ukraine, he made a deal with the Russians. He agreed to extend the lease contract for the Sevastopol military base until 2024, and in return he got a 30% discount on the Russian gas. A good price from a business POV. Meanwhile, the behavior of the new regime quickly buried the ambitions of the pro-Western part of Ukraine, the hopes for NATO membership were gone, and the country was again brought back into the Russian sphere of influence.
Everything shows that Ukraine will continue its centuries-old tradition of swinging between the East and West and back again, wondering which way to take. The question now is when the Ukrainian people will run out of patience again and will flood the Maidan square, and scream again in favor of democracy and independence. But I'm not so sure it will be as bloodless this time.