LITTLE RUSSIA OR UKRAINE: THE EURASIAN EAST VERSUS THE EUROPEAN WEST
The crisis in Ukraine, which since November 2013 has seemingly taken us all by surprise, has three components: Crimea, Russia, and Ukraine. But is there anything really surprising in what has unfolded and will continue to unfold in this volatile part of the world?
In this past few weeks, much of the world’s media has told us that Crimea is really “a historic Russian land,” which only recently had become part ofUkraine.
It might be useful to remember a few basic historic facts. Crimea was annexed to what was then the Russian Empire in 1783 and remained part of that empire and its Soviet successor state until 1954; that is, for 170 years. Since 1954, Crimea has been part of Ukraine; that is, for 60 years. But the longest period of rule in Crimea was from the mid-fifteenth to late eighteenth centuries; that is, roughly 330 years, when it was part of the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean Khanate was ruled by the ancestors of the Crimean Tatars as a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. It is also important to note that we are speaking specifically about Crimean Tatars, who are different in terms of their history and culture from other related but distinct Turkic peoples, such as the Volga Tatars or Kazan Tatars.
As for the population of Crimea, it was never Russian, nor for that matter even Slavic. The age-old farthest extent of Slavic settlement was the Ros River, which is only about 100 kilometers south of Kiev. This means that the Slavs, including Russians, cannot be considered the indigenous inhabitants of the Ukrainian steppe and certainly not of Crimea. Russians, and to a lesser extent Ukrainians, began to settle in Crimea only from the outset of the nineteenth century. Therefore, pride of place as the population that has lived longest in Crimea goes to the Crimean Tatars. Hence, if politicians, journalists, and scholarly commentators are obliged to make use of sound bites, the appropriate one would be: “Crimea – the historic land of the Crimean Tatars.”
There is also some uncertainty about the number of Crimean Tatars in Crimea. In 2001 (the last census), there were just over two million inhabitants in Crimea, of whom 243,000, or 12 percent, were Crimean Tatars. It is likely today that their number is about 300,000.
Where did these 243,000 to 300,000 come from, if we are told that the entire group – about 188,000 at the time – was forcibly and brutally deported on direct orders from Stalin to Soviet Central Asia? The exodus eastward began on what for the Crimean Tatars has ever since been remembered as their Black Day (Qara Kun) – May 18, 1944.
After languishing for nearly half a century in Soviet Uzbekistan, the vast majority returned home from exile in the early 1990s, thanks largely to the welcoming policy of the government of independent Ukraine. It is for this reason that the Crimean Tatars and their political and civic institutions are fiercely loyal to Ukraine and fear having to live under Russian rule.
If Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russian government is not problematic enough, even worse are the local Russian inhabitants of Crimea, who generally detest what they consider usurpers from the east, who have had the audacity to return and demand to live in a “Russian land.” For many of the local Russian inhabitants, who by the way live in the houses built and owned by Crimean Tatars before 1944, these Muslim intruders should go back where they came from and allegedly belong - the East.
And what is the position of Russia in all of this? Many commentators seem surprised by the boldness, some would even say recklessness, of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Actually, there should not be the slightest surprise. He is just acting – and quite successfully – in a manner established by a long line of rulers stretching from medieval Muscovy, through the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation. That manner is determined by historic Muscovite-Russian geopolitical goals and deep-seated cultural beliefs.
We all know about the Muscovite and imperial Russian goal to secure year-long warm water ports on the Black Sea. The centuries-long struggle to push out the Ottom Empire and Crimean Khanate form the northern shores of the Black Sea was finally accomplished in the 1780s during the reign of Catherine II, for which Russians designate her as “the Great.”
Less known – or spoken about – are Putin’s ideological goals, which are based on long established cultural traditions inculcated in him and in all Russians.
In short, ever since at least the fifteenth century, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union have wanted to regain the lands that they felt rightfully belonged to them – what is known as the heritage of medieval Kievan Rus’. And of all of Russia’s so-called great leaders, this goal was finally achieved by Joseph Stalin in 1945. The sphere that Russian ideologists claim to have been part of the Kievan inheritance includes much of European Russia, all of Belarus, throw in the Baltic states as well, and certainly all of Ukraine up to and beyond the Carpathians in the west and to the shores of the Black Sea in the south. (No matter that the Baltic northeastern and Black Sea southern fringes of this area were never part of Kievan Rus!).
This view of the “Russian world” is deeply embedded in the mind-set of every Russian. Yes, a Russian is quick to point out, we love Belarus and Belarusans; yes, we love Little Russia and Little Russians. How can we not love them? Belarusans and Little Russians are an integral part of our very body and soul. They not only speak the same basic variants of East Slavic languages, they are all Eastern Christians, a faith expressed best through the one and only “true” Orthodox faith. In this scenario, there is simply no place for a distinct Ukraine, unless that concept is understood as simply the Little Russian component of the one and indivisible world of Mother Russia.
Vladimir Putin has become the most recent embodiment of the Russian idea, and he has acted systematically in making that idea a reality. One of his greatest triumphs came in 2007, when the diminutive former KGB officer stood alongside the patriarch and primate of the two largest Russian Orthodox Churches – the Moscow Patriarchate and Church Abroad (the Synod) – as they healed the great division (Raskol) of the Russian Orthodox Church that had existed since the Bolshevik Revolution.
We in the West are also unaware or choose to overlook the fact that, with Lukashenka and Belarus voluntarily in his pocket, Putin has during at least the past decade tried to undermine Ukraine, whether eastern Ukraine and Crimea, or farther west in Transcarpathia and even Moldova. All these places are considered Russian, and to emphasize that point numerous publications from the nineteenth century that speak of “Little Russia” and “Carpathian Russia” (and that includes ethnic Ukrainian Galicia and Bukovina), as well as television news programs on these lands have been produced at state expense, usually under the auspices of the Russkii Mir/Russian World Foundation.
Therefore, Putin’s actions are really a forgone conclusion. Begin with Crimea, the least ethnic Ukrainian of Ukraine’s lands, and arrange to be invited in by the region’s autonomous parliament after it declares independence. Ironically, this very same scenario was followed two hundred years ago by Empress Catherine II. In 1772, the Crimean Khanate became an indepdendent state under Russian protection. Eleven years later it was annexed by the Russian Empire. Last week we witnessed the same scenario, but with one difference; instead of eleven years it took perhaps only eleven hours to go from Crimean independence to Russian annexation.
As for the rest of Ukraine, of course it must not be partitioned, as President Putin has told us. And he will stick to his word. Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, considered the country’s legitimate leader by Putin, will, when the moment is right, request his ally Russia to intervene in order to get his country back and place it firmly in the Euroasian Union about to come into being under Russia’s auspices next year.
Therefore, I am not a skeptical critic of US President Obama, when he says there can be a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine. Of course, there is a diplomatic solution and it is this. The West simply needs to accept Vladimir Putin’s historical and strategic understanding: (1) that thanks to him a natural Russian cultural and geopolitical space is being restored; and (2) that Russia is ready to cooperate fully with its neighbor to the immediate west, the European Union, as well as with the United States for the mutual economic benefit of all concerned.
There is one sticky point, however, that causes a problem for the Muscovite-Russian-Putin scenario. I have in mind the Ukrainians, or at least those Ukrainians who believe in their own distinct state and culture. As is evident during the last few months, tens of thousands of Ukrainians of all backgrounds – ethnic Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, Crimean Tatar, even Russian – have shown incredible bravery and a willingness to struggle and even die for their country.
Will this spirit of the 2013-2014 Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev be translated into resolve by Ukraine’s current government to mobilize fully its military and to resist with force – despite the cost – any further violation of its borders by Russia? Will the West continue to supply not only funds for the country’s economic bailout, but also for military supplies to the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian armed forces?
As this crisis continues to unfold, there are two possible eventualities: Ukraine as a Little Russian component of a Russian-dominated Eurasian Union; or an independent Ukraine allied closer to the European Union and perhaps to NATO. The Little Russian solution that is favored by Putin – preferably in the absence of widespread violence – is quite possible if Ukraine’s leaders are willing to compromise, to succumb to economic pressure, and to overlook internal provocative actions by pro-Russian elements most likely to continue with indirect assistance from Russia in eastern Ukraine.
Independence, on the other hand, can be preserved only through the firmest resolve on the part of the present interim government which must make clear to itself and its citizens that it is ready, if necessary, to use military force to fulfill its constitutional mandate – defense of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Alas, firm resolution on the part of Ukraine’s leadership has already been compromised in Crimea. Will Ukrainian leaders compromise further when it comes to the rest ofUkraine?
TheUnited States,Canada, and the European Union should do what is their own best interests: support in whatever way possible the increasing number of Ukrainian citizens, regardless of their ethnic or religious background, who reject Putin’s Little Russian scenario and who prefer to live in a pro-Western independent and democraticUkraine.
