By Anatoly HUTSAL, First Deputy Director, National Institute
of Ukrainian-Russian Relations
Russia's most recent days could aptly be called Ukrainian owing to their
emotional and informational pitch. And not only because the federal ruling
elite was being tested by Ukraine, while the broad masses even had to recall
that there is such a word as Ukraine in the geographical and political
vocabulary. Moreover, this word was used to make an impression on, if not
to frighten, each who heard it.
More importantly, it became clear Ukraine is a phenomenon of international
scale, and Russia got a nice opportunity to look in the mirror of her international
relations with it. And it is not the mirror's fault that someone did not
see what he wished.
That the treaty has been ratified but not yet come into force is symbolic,
in a way: the Russian Federation's upper house, the Council of the Federation,
embroidered the treaty with reservations, giving a unique opportunity to
none other than our own Verkhovna Rada to put a final dot on this protracted
process, and thus witness the completion of a fundamental stage in the
making of Ukrainian statehood. It must be for this reason that Yuri Luzhkov
went ballistic, brandishing the bugbear of a "final" or "righteous judgment"
by generations to come.
But what had happened also showed a different sense: on the same day
Verkhovna Rada confirmed its consent to prosecuting Pavlo Lazarenko - the
very person who on the one hand, as former premier, signed for the Ukrainian
side the Black Sea Accords, the last stumbling-block on the road to the
treaty, and, on the other, put up unbending opposition to those in power
and did everything he could to compromise them.
In this way Parliament did its bit to clear the roadblocks standing
in the way of ratification of accords on the status and conditions of stationing
the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the Ukrainian territory, on criteria for
dividing the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, on mutual settlements associated with
division of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, and on stationing of the Russian
Black Sea Fleet on the Ukrainian territory. However, certain relapses into
Neanderthal thinking are not to be ruled out - too many emotions have already
poured out, and it may take more than one lifetime for lovers of confrontation
to live through them.
Ukraine
As to the making of national statehood, Ukraine may, at first glance,
be regarded as a true minion of fortune. Independence, sovereignty, and
international recognition - all this, again at first glance, seems to have
come on its own, without a strong-arm and, the more so, bloody showdown.
Matters like this should be appraised with a different system of values.
The 1933 famine, the Chornobyl disaster, and nuclear disarmament may be
the price Ukraine paid for the relative ease with which it has solved foreign-
policy issues. Perhaps, it shows such Oriental principles as soft beats
hard and weak beats strong.
The treaty brings Ukraine to a new phase of development, putting tangible
content into its framework. And this is much more complex than struggle
for something. What is needed here besides luck is painstaking high-skilled
work, by which the world community is going to judge about our being civilized.
One of the most important tasks on this road is to break the staid stereotype
of Ukrainian politics ascribed to Ukrainians by Russian intellectuals as
early as at the turn of this century in Comprehensive History as adapted
by the satirical magazine Satirikon:
"Freedom had been won, and the Cossacks turned sad.
"'What are we to do with freedom?' they asked Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
"'It binds us fast,' said old disgruntled Cossacks. 'When there's no
freedom, you can fight for it. That's fun. A now what? There's nothing
to punch a nose for.'
"'It's bad when you've got nothing to fight for!,' agreed the young.
"The Cossacks kept yawning and doing nothing. The Tartars were also
left jobless and started to think about a war against the Cossacks.
"Khmelnytsky saw this and suggested at last: 'Hey, brothers, let's give
ourselves away to a certain state!'
"'Hurrah,' cried out the joyful Cossacks, 'These are words of gold.'
"'Let's give Ukraine away, and then try to take her back again. After
taking her back, we'll give her away again, and, having given away, we'll
be taking her back again...'"
How similar this story is with what Stratford Incorporation analysts
suggest in their scenario of a returned iron curtain, or the Russian national
intellectuals do when they suggest that Ukraine be put out to pasture so
that then it will crawl back on its belly and ask to be let into the Union,
and so on.
The Satirikon scenario should also be a clear warning to Ukraine's political
Cossacks who are used to mapping out their strategy exclusively on a confrontation
basis, even on the eve of the ratification of the Black Sea Accords.
Russia
With ratification of the Grand Treaty begun, Russia entered, figuratively
speaking, a struggle with itself. Latent underground sources feeding the
tree of Russian statehood have come into play, bringing into motion all
political forces. In actual terms, the adoption of the treaty is the result
of not so much Ukrainian-Russian compromises and deals as agreements within
the framework of the Russian ruling elite. And now this process is being
spilled out first into the party ranks and then into the masses of people.
First of all, Russia will have to squeeze in the awareness that Ukraine
is no longer its property, that is as independent a state as, say, China.
A painful process. Painful, among other things, because it cuts the last
thread that gave hope for reviving the Soviet Union. Also into oblivion
sunk the 1990 Ukrainian-Russian Treaty which recognized the borders only
within the USSR. It is perhaps not accidental in this connection that the
Crimea - the most "acute" factor of Ukrainian-Russian relations - has until
recently remained the true bearer of the idea of reviving the USSR (this
is why most Crimeans supported Communists in the last elections).
Now it is Russia that will have to be tested by the Crimea, maybe to
the same extent as in the early 1990s Crimean "separatism" stimulated a
Ukrainian ruling elite, already in nirvana, to activate its state-building
work and to launch an uncompromising struggle against state-supported crime
in the late 90s. Will Russia be able to break the Crimean impasse, to which
she is being driven by Luzhkov and Co., with positive political and moral
gains? We are inclined to believe that Mr. Luzhkov will not manage to induce
Russia to defend the Crimea and Sevastopol and, moreover, to "teach Ukrainians
to love Russians" both in and outside Moscow.
In 1653 the last Russian Assembly of the Land (Zemsky sobor) passed
a resolution on union with Ukraine. It was not a simple decision: the previous
Assembly had declined a similar decision. It is symbolic that after resolving
the Ukrainian issue the body, as an islet of democracy, sank into the fathomless
ocean of Russian absolutism. The next year, 1654, the union between the
Russian Tsar and the Ukrainian Hetman was concluded.
Life provides a quaint reflection: 343 years later the two presidents
signed a Grand Treaty whose destiny they handed over to their Parliaments.
Only time will tell if this treaty will become a launch pad to encourage
a true transition of Russian power from authoritarianism to democracy and
freedom.
Meanwhile, the last word remains with Ukrainian Parliament.






