We must begin to get used to the idea that Ukraine has ceased to exist in the form we have been accustomed to seeing over the last twenty years. Ukrainian statehood will most likely be reborn at a different time, within different borders, and with a new political content. For this to happen, conditions must arise that do not exist today and, in all likelihood, will not exist any time soon. On the one hand, elites must emerge within Ukraine itself that are neither ideologically nor organisationally linked to the clans that led the country to economic and political bankruptcy. On the other hand, there must be some kind of pause in the foreign policy “battle for Ukraine”. Paradoxically, the dawn of Ukraine now depends on the twilight of Russia. The annexation of Crimea is not a local conflict, and there is no concrete, separate solution to this problem. A way out of this crisis will be linked to the reformatting of the entire current world order. With Crimea, the 20th century has historically come to an end.
The Second Imperialist War
Russia and Europe (in the broader sense, the West) are currently in a state of mutual war. This is a reality that must be acknowledged and one that must not be obscured by the lack of visible combat operations. It is simply a tribute to the nuclear age, in which a global war is impossible in the forms we have been used to seeing. However, both sides are in a state of total mobilisation, and their political goal in relation to one another is the destruction of the opponent. What was not at all obvious before is now being declared almost openly.
This war, by its nature, is closer to the First (imperialist) World War than the Second, with its clearly defined ideological opposition of liberalism, fascism, and communism. Of course, an ideological conflict is also present in the current clash between Russia and the West. The Kremlin is speaking out increasingly openly against Western liberal values, while the West is stubbornly trying to spread these values beyond the borders of its usual living space. However, interests now dominate over ideas, and the battle for Ukraine has a clearly defined nuance of dividing spheres of influence, which is implemented by imperialist power centres. In this conflict, Russia’s archaic “pre-political” nationalism clashes with the West’s postmodern “sublimated” nationalism.
As for Russia, everything looks even simpler. No one in the Kremlin is hiding the fact anymore that the current leadership’s foreign policy goal is the restoration of the Russian Empire to borders as close as possible to its historical maximum. Having abandoned the idea of building a nation-state in the sense that this process has been assigned since the beginning of the European New Age, Russia has returned to the customary practice of solving internal problems by exporting them outwards, namely at the expense of expansion and the seizure of new territories. For modern Russia, war is not an excess, but a universal and perfectly acceptable instrument for resolving conflicts.
The anecdotal nature of the situation lies in the fact that, by acting this way, Russia is effectively just parodying the Western political practice that the West has pursued (and still pursues) for the last 20 years, both in relation to Russia and towards many other countries in the world. Modern Western ideology is degenerating, turning into a “liberal fundamentalism” that has only a very indirect connection to its historical foundation. It is rather a mechanistic appendage of a sublimated “postmodern” Western imperialism. Western political rationalism has transformed into sanctimonious political correctness, under the guise of which the united Western bureaucracy pushes its own interests in territories that have freed themselves from Soviet influence.
Relying on its economic and technological superiority, the West has for many years been quite successfully pushing Russia out of this zone, including Ukraine, formally (but only formally) without violating the framework of existing international norms. In the end, cornered Russia has decided to resort to a historically proven method – to spit on all international norms and show brute force as the only argument that matters in a dispute. By taking this step, it has made its hidden war visible, but nothing more. Russia has opened Pandora’s box, releasing from it “threats” of which it will itself one day become a victim. But Ukraine will become a victim even earlier. The Partition of Ukraine
Ukraine is the Poland of the 21st century. The buffer zone between Russia and the West has simply shifted to the east. This promises nothing good for Ukraine. Moscow’s proposal to hold “four-party” talks, in which, alongside the Ukrainian government, representatives of separatists from the eastern regions would participate, only confirms Russia’s plans for the partition of Ukraine as a compromise in its relations with the West. It seems that hard times are approaching for Ukraine, just as they were for Poland in the 18th century. The Ukrainian nation-state was unhappily born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. It is destined to become a bargaining chip in Russia’s deal with the West.
There has been much talk and writing about Russia’s aggression against Ukraine (which, without a doubt, is not limited to Crimea). However, little is said or written about why this aggression has proven to be so successful. Throughout all the preceding years, Ukraine, with its internal and external policies, has provoked this aggression and facilitated the task of a potential aggressor. Russian nationalism is still archaic, and Western nationalism has acquired “postmodern” features, but Ukrainian nationalism has turned out to be infantile. For twenty years, Ukraine has been sitting on an empty petrol tank, throwing matches at the petrol tanker parked next to it.
Just like Russia, Ukraine also failed to build a functional state after the collapse of the Soviet empire. In terms of the scale of corruption, Ukrainian statehood even surpasses the reality in Russia. But unlike Russia, which is supported by a cushion of oil and gas security, Ukraine could not afford such a state. What is permitted to the owner of Gazprom is not permitted to the owner of Naftogaz. It turns out that corruption is not something Ukraine can afford, and it became a bankrupt state. In this sad state, it had to accept war with Russia.
But even that is only half the trouble. The real trouble is that the Ukrainian elites have never managed to reach constructive clarity regarding their identity. Like many other lands that have only politically freed themselves from colonial dependence but are very far from real economic independence, the success of nation-state building in Ukraine was measured almost exclusively by the extent to which it managed to distance itself from Russia. This created a dangerous illusion that the further from Russia, the better. Despite all the public assurances of “fraternal friendship”, this illusion was actively cultivated in the consciousness of the “nationally oriented” strata of Ukrainian society.
The scale of Ukraine’s real dependence on Russia – first and foremost in connection with oil and gas supply – was not duly assessed. Political scenarios doomed to failure from the very start were developed, based on presenting what is desired as what exists. The public was imbued with the idea that dependence on Russia would end immediately, that Ukraine was being robbed, that without Russian resources and without the Russian market, the Ukrainian economy could survive. A society whose self-esteem was constantly offended believed these fantasies willingly. The West willingly supported these illusions. Everyone carefully avoided discussing the harsh, unappealing reality that Ukraine is tied to the Russian economy by steel pipelines for many years to come, and the West cannot offer Ukraine any real alternative to Russian energy supplies in the near future.
Ukraine’s internal and external policy for 20 years (regardless of the government that implemented it) was one single adventure, based on a typically Russian, but by no means Ukrainian, reliance on avos – the hope for things to just work out. By the way, in this sense, Leonid Kuchma was much more adequate than his successors; he at least understood well that dreams only come true for the Gazprom concern. Ukraine needed its own Ivan Kalita, but it was governed only by false Dmitrys.
Part of this adventurous policy was playing games with the Russian language, which is spoken by a third of the country’s population. Since Russian-speaking Ukrainians did not feel any particular problems in daily life or at work, an artificial tension was constantly maintained around this topic. Elementary national vanity, a baseless conceit, did not allow the new elite that had come to power in Kyiv to make the only sensible decision about ensuring the rights of Russian speakers, thereby removing the internal tension. Even in the first, most tense days after the revolution, the Rada did not reduce tension but poured diesel on the fire by voting for the completely irrational decision to revoke the regional language status of the Russian language.
In the end, Ukraine dragged itself into a civil war, and Russia did not shy away from using this situation to solve its internal problems and satisfy its imperial ambitions at Ukraine’s expense. If it does not suffer a quick and crushing defeat in a clash with the West (but there is little evidence of such a possibility), then sooner or later the West will have to seek a temporary compromise with Russia. This compromise is achievable only at the price of partitioning Ukraine. The first partition of Ukraine has already taken place – Russia has got Crimea for itself. The consequences of the second partition (it does not matter whether it happens now or in a couple of years) could be the annexation of the entire south-eastern region of the country to Russia. As a result of a third partition, Ukraine as an independent state could de facto cease to exist.
War and the Intelligentsia
Just as it was a hundred years ago, this imperialist war has become a complex challenge for the intelligentsia of Russia, the West, and Ukraine. It is necessary for them to formulate their attitude and take a position. There is a problem that it is effectively impossible to take an unambiguous position in an absolutely ambiguous situation. The truth today is that half-truths have gained the upper hand in the public consciousness of the countries involved in the conflict.
The majority of the Russian intelligentsia has rallied under the banners of the empire – partly instinctively, partly guided by various motives that are not entirely free from mercantilism (in the broad sense of the word). This majority completely ignores the imperial nature of the war started by their own government and silently gives its consent to Russia’s transformation, at best, into a police state, and at worst, into a totalitarian one. But even the minority that stands against the war and condemns the actions of the Russian government does not try to tell the full truth. It tries not to notice the imperial lining of the West’s actions regarding Ukraine and to avoid the delicate topic of the “sufferer” behaviour of the Ukrainian authorities on the eve of the crisis.
In an analogous way, criticism of the Kremlin is growing in the West – even if slightly belated, it is on the whole well-founded – after the West had previously looked through its fingers at the Kremlin’s “mischief”. At the same time, little is said about the imperialist essence of the West’s own policy, about the unpleasant nature of pseudo-liberal messianism, about the lack of readiness to place on their own shoulders the burden of sponsoring the Ukrainian economy, which has been carried by Russia by inertia since the collapse of the USSR. All this makes the position of Western society no less one-sided than the position of Russian society in both of its (imperial and liberal) hypostases.
But things are saddest with Ukraine. There are practically no political and public forces there that have enough courage to look the harsh reality in the eye and stop living in economic and political fantasies. This does not mean that there are no people in Ukraine capable of understanding what is actually happening with their country and culture. It is just that these people cannot afford to speak the truth, and society is not prepared in the slightest to hear this truth. Ukraine’s recovery can only begin when a tolerant Ukrainian nationalism appears that is capable of accepting Russia “as an objective reality given to Ukraine in sensations”.
Paradoxically, in connection with the start of this war, the intelligentsia of Russia, the West, and Ukraine face similar tasks – the struggle against the imperialist policy of their own governments in all its diverse forms and manifestations: archaic, infantile, or postmodern. If Russia and Ukraine still have to discover liberal values for themselves, then the West seems to need to discover them anew, cleansing itself of the pseudo-liberal legacy of the last decades while simultaneously not falling into a new “right-wing ideology”.
Article first published in the May 2014 issue of Rīgas Laiks magazine