Ukraine and Russia
Ukraine is an independent, sovereign nation, a neighbor to Russia, Romania, Moldova, Belorussia and bordering the Black Sea. It is a member of the UN and has been so since its inception. It was a member of the USSR, and along with most of the other republics, it decided to exit when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
The roots of this conflict date back 1000 years. Ukraine’s capital, Kiev/Kyiv was settled long ago along the river trade routes from Byzantium to the Vikings from Scandinavia. It was the thriving center of the principality of the Kievan Rus. The Mongols under Genghis Khan destroyed the city; some of the survivors moved to Moscow and played key roles in the rise of the duchy of Muscovy (Moscow). Parts of Ukraine were then ruled by the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Russian Empire. Crimea was conquered and ruled by the Tatars; it served as the center of the slave trade where Russians and Ukrainians were sold into slavery in the Arab and then the Ottoman Empires.
During the 15th through 18th Centuries, Ukraine developed an early democratic republic, the Cossack Hetmanate, comprised in part of Cossacks and of serfs who had run away from serfdom in Poland and Russia and from slavery in the Ottoman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks There were elections; there was a written constitution; people had rights and freedoms. These rights and freedoms were unknown, unimaginable, and unheard of in the Russian, Polish and Ottoman Empires surrounding them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_Hetmanate The Hetmanate allied with the Swedish King Charles XII against Peter the Great of Russia, and their combined forces lost at the Battle of Poltova, which destroyed Swedish military power. Russia progressively conquered and took over Ukraine. During the reign of Catherine the Great, she fully abolished the rights and autonomy of the Hetmanate. The Ukrainian language and culture were suppressed, and Russian became the language of the urban elite, while Ukrainian remained the language of the peasants, the farms and small towns.
During the 19th Century, concepts of nationalism and democracy took hold throughout Europe, and there were a series of revolts and revolutions seeking to overthrow and replace the ruling monarchies with democracy and to put an end to oppression. In part these revolts were inspired by the French and American Revolutions. During and after the First World War, the Russian Tsars, the Ottoman Emperors, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperors all lost their thrones and in some cases their lives. In all cases but Russia, new liberal democracies replaced the old conservative monarchies.
The Russian Revolution was the last of these revolutions, and it established a new form of government -- Communism. The revolts of 1848 and 1870 in Europe had sought to establish liberal democratic socialism in place of the monarchies and of laissez faire capitalism. The Industrial Revolution was moving workers from the farms to factories and into big, over-crowded cities with poor living conditions. Socialism was an effort to get governments involved in ameliorating the worst impacts of unchecked capitalism during the Industrial Revolution through regulation of working conditions and social programs like universal public education. Democracy allowed the working classes and middle classes to participate in elections to select the government officials that make the decisions that govern their lives.
Russia had been ruled by the dictates of the Tsars and the enforcement of their secret police. Communism as practiced in the USSR posited that the government (not corporations or individuals) owns all the means of production, and that the only permissible political party and political expression is the Communist Party. In the writings of Marx and Engels, communism would first arise in the heavily industrialized nations of Europe, like England and Germany, not in the most agrarian, least industrialized, and least economically advanced nation, Russia. In 1861, Russia was the last European country to abolish serfdom, a medieval practice akin to slavery and Southern sharecropper farming.
Under the theories of Marx and Engels, Communism was to be run by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this was to be followed by a withering away of the state and the achievement of a utopian society. We have yet to see any withering away of such states. Instead under Stalin, Russia became a police state of purges, Siberian gulags, tortures, show trials and executions.
After the Russians were defeated, and the Tsar was overthrown in the First World War, the Ukrainians sought to create their own independent, socialist republic during the period from 1918-21. It was overthrown by Russian Soviet armies and then became incorporated as part of the USSR. In the USSR, there were 15 separate socialist republics; each of whom (under the explicit guarantees of the Soviet Constitution) had the right to leave/secede. (Which they all did in 1991, Russia and Ukraine were among the first republics to leave. All embraced some form of market capitalism and some veneer or more of democracy).
Initially, under Lenin, the Communist Party pursued a policy allowing and encouraging the different languages and cultures in the Soviet Union. They also pursued policies that allowed for free enterprise, which encouraged fast economic growth. This all changed with the death of Lenin and the rise to power of Stalin and the growth of the police state.
USSR under Stalin practiced centralized economic and social planning under directives from Moscow. This led to rapid Russian industrialization and economic growth which then stagnated without the correctives of market incentives to improve price, quality, and production, and in conjunction with the defeat in Afghanistan precipitated the downfall of the USSR.
In Russia, the dictatorship and oppression of the Russian Tsars was replaced by the dictatorship and oppression of the Russian Communist Party. This extended to Ukraine and the other Soviet Republics. Under Stalin, the USSR sought to collectivize and centrally plan Soviet agriculture; it did not work, and 3.5 to 5 million persons starved to death in 1932-33, predominantly in Ukraine, the breadbasket of the USSR. This became known as the Holdomor, and is considered by the Ukrainians as genocide by Stalin.
The Second World War broke out when in 1939 Hitler and Stalin agreed to invade and divide up Poland between them. Then in 1941, Hitler invaded Russia. The terrible Russian suffering during the war, and the ultimate victory is organic to the mythos of the Russian state, and it is epitomized in the statute in Volgograd of Mother Russia with her sword defending the nation.
Ukraine suffered badly from the Nazi occupation (5-7 million died). Many Ukrainians fought bravely against the Nazis, while others however collaborated and even fought with the Nazis against Stalin; still others collaborated initially then turned to guerilla warfare against both the German occupation and Stalin. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Nazi-occupation-of-Soviet-Ukraine A number of Ukrainian nationalists, particularly in Western Ukraine became prominent Nazi collaborators and participated with the Nazis in the massacres of Jews at Babi Yar and the killing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany This betrayal of Russia by some Ukrainian nationalists during World War II due to their hatred of the Soviet police state under Stalin underlies Putin’s lies about today’s Ukraine. After the end of WW II, an armed rebellion continued in the Western Ukraine against the USSR for at least a decade. Khrushchev was Agriculture Secretary and then General Secretary of the Ukraine during this period of putting down the rebellion of the Ukrainian nationalists.
After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev allowed the teaching of the Ukrainian language, the devolution of some decision-making from Moscow to the Regional Soviet Republics, the promotion of Ukrainians to positions of power and responsibility in Ukraine and the USSR, and the release of political prisoners from Stalin’s concentration camps. He also transferred the region of Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR. Stalin had deported the native population of Crimean Tatars (who were Muslims) from Crimea to Siberia and resettled native Russians to repopulate Crimea and replace them.
Russification was the conscious policy of both the Tsars and Russian Communist Party. Russification included a policy to teach in Russian, to promote Russians to positions of power and responsibility, and to resettle Russians into each of the 15 distinct Republics. It also suppressed the native local languages, cultures, and history. This had been the policy of the Poles, the Habsburgs and the Russian empire, and it had always provoked wide and strong Ukrainian opposition.
The USSR comprised 15 separate Republics which were defined in part by their distinct ethnic populations. Uzbeks lived in Uzbek SSR; Lithuanians lived in Lithuania SSR; Kirghiz lived in Kirgiz SSR, and Russians in Russian SSR. Under the Constitution of the USSR, each of the 15 Republics was entitled to secede and form a separate independent state. Ukrainian nationalists wanted to use their own language, learn their own history, practice their own culture, occupy positions of power and responsibility in their own republic, and they wanted decision-making to devolve from Moscow to Ukraine. During the post Stalinist period, they were not displaying much interest in independence.
The two most important post Khrushchev leaders of the Ukraine had radically different policies. The first favored and promoted Ukrainization; his successor promoted Russification. Under the first, enrollment in the Ukrainian Communist Party soared. Under the second, dissidents were imprisoned; Party membership declined, and eventually the economy tanked. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/Ukraine-under-Shcherbytsky Then Chernobyl melted down and caused an environmental catastrophe in the North of Ukraine.
Not long after, the Soviet Union dissolved, with each of the 15 constituent Republics choosing independence. All embraced democracy and sought to introduce a degree of market capitalism while jettisoning communism in order to jump start their economies. The Ukrainian Parliament declared independence on August 24, 1991, and ninety percent of the voters approved independence on December 1.
Russia and Ukraine were joint founders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Ukraine agreed to give up all its nuclear weapons, and the US, Russia and the UK guaranteed its independence and territorial integrity from attack. After these promising starts of cooperation, how did we get to the point that Russia has invaded Ukraine, is committing extensive war crimes, and is destroying its towns and cities? There are several reasons: number one is Vladimir Putin himself, and number two is the very different aspirations of the two neighbors. Ukraine wants to join the EU and NATO and have a European style democracy and economy, and it also wants good relations with Putin’s Russia, that desperately does not want it to join the EU and certainly not NATO. Ukrainian politicians and election voters have tried for three decades to straddle these two incompatible goals. Russia under Putin seeks to recreate the scope of Imperial Russia or the Soviet Union under its leadership in the CIS, and it has been willing to use great force to bring that about. Russia under Putin is reverting to the autocracy and the imprisonment, poisoning and murder of any form of opposition (think of all the prominent people being thrown out of windows) that was prevalent under Stalin and the Tsars.
Putin has already invaded Georgia, and Moldova. And when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, he was successful in taking over Crimea and portions of Eastern Ukraine *(the heavy industry regions of Luhansk and Donbas). During the Trump Administration, US Russia relations warmed, and Trump sought to weaken and delay aid to the Ukrainians. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort had managed the political campaigns of Putin’s man in the Ukraine as well. Trump’s fans like George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson have now become strong Putin fans as well.
As compared to Ukraine, Russia is far larger, has many more resources, a much larger military, and a history of success in using force. After his earlier successes, Putin grossly miscalculated the extent of successful resistance in 2022 from Ukrainians, from the NATO members, and from the US that he would face in invading Ukraine and installing (reinstalling) a compliant leader.
As in the Tsarist past, Russia does not want a strong neighbor with a vibrant democracy, a growing economy and alliances with its “enemies” in the US and Europe on its Southern doorstep. Putin is now entering into a no-win quagmire; he has committed lots of troops and lost lots of Russian lives. If he were to win militarily, Russia faces decades of guerilla warfare and violent resistance on its Southern borders; he has united all the diverse Ukrainian factions from far left to far right against him. If Russia loses, Putin likely loses power, and Russia becomes a very different kind of state. What kind is not discernible or knowable at this time. Putin’s best bet is a negotiated settlement restoring the status quo ante, using China as his interlocutor. This may not be possible as Ukraine is now extremely highly motivated to join NATO for its future security and the EU for its economic future, and NATO and the EU have rarely been this united in perceiving and reacting to Putin’s aggression within Europe’s borders.