On the peculiar features of natiogenesis

A fortnight of winter vacations was a good chance to share private opinions and analyze the result of this sharing. And also, to take another look on the ongoing events in Ukraine in the European context. And to make conclusions that are not pleasant for everyone.

Such conclusions, which are unpleasant for Europeans in the first place, were made by Joschka Fischer, former vice chancellor and foreign minister of Germany. It was not Maidan that attracted his attention, but the actions of Yanukovych, who made the independence of Ukraine questionable and thus put the stability and safety of the whole Europe under the question as well.

I would like to add that the acceleration of Yanukovych’s actions is the only real result of Maidan, which started as a fight for European integration but has achieved the opposite results so far. Which is a positive result, too: it revealed who is who, what the real alignment of forces is, and what the major peculiarities of the Ukrainian nation forming are.

But while talking to many Ukrainians, it is impossible to say this out loud about Maidan and its consequences without being accused of imperialism, working for Putin. It is also impossible to talk without constant mentioning that Ukrainians are special. When it comes to this, all nations are special. And these special features should be viewed realistically.

Sergey Nesterenko’s article on the collapse of Gene Sharp’s color revolutions technology possesses that necessary degree of realism. Yanukovych failed to outwit, suppress physically, or win over Maidan. But he “outpeaced” it. He chose the tactics of peaceful ignoring of Maidan’s actions.

This is very precise, and what is more important, it is dedicated to the topic that is rarely mentioned. The main subject is Maidan, but the government’s actions are not highlighted. And I am afraid, this is the main mistake of those who created a view on the current situation in Ukraine that has Maidan as its core.

Meanwhile, European politicians, and they stress it, will have to deal with the incumbent government, but not with Maidan. And they will have to do it in the new conditions, created in the process of the accelerated (I will repeat, accelerated by Maidan) implementation of financial agreements between Russia and Ukraine. It is quite likely that Europeans will misunderstand each other. Yes, a lot of them share Fischer’s fears, but the smart part of turning Ukraine into Kyiv General Governorate is that Russia turns Europe into an ally by buying out Ukrainian debt. It is a Munich Agreement without negotiations, a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact without a war.

The already started implementation of the Yanukovych-Putin accords puts the opposition leaders into a difficult position. It is easy and simple to say on Maidan that these accords must be denounced. But what should be done to an already executed tranche? And how will Europe’s leaders react to such a turn of events? Will they unreservedly support such a decision? And which opposition leader would like to assume such responsibility by becoming the leader of a not completely sovereign state?

With the help of Yanukovych Putin made yet another step, aimed not at penetration of the world finance system, but at its subjugation. Yes, at subjugation to him, but not to Russia. Forget Russian interests, they are not to be discussed! Now, when asked to define Absurdistan, one can say that it is Russia, which allows its rulers to dispose of the people’s money in such a way only to preserve its power, because the appearance of a national state in Russia would sweep away the present regime, which can only exist in archaic imperialistic circumstances.

But as we see, everything is done to achieve this. And there is no denying Putin’s intellect, sophistication, and consistency. Both Ukraine and Europe become tools in his hands. Especially, the Europe of today.

Yes, the European Union finished the year on the rise, but it is a purely economic rise. Its further development will be greatly affected by the Eastern European factor: the formation of the united neo-totalitarian space in Eastern Europe. The political evolution of Turkey, a NATO member state, should be added to the picture. And also, the problem everyone is trying not to talk about: the obvious deviation of the Hungarian ruling elite from the European principles, which can blow up an ethnic bomb at any given moment on the territory of Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia.

However, Hungary still stands out among the mentioned countries. But Turkey, which failed to implement the external political concept of neo-Ottomanism and is torn apart due to internal Islamization, is related to the three Eastern Slavic countries in terms of the shared trend in the development of their political systems. This tendency is towards the government’s autonomy from society and zero influence of any social movements, no matter how massive they are, on the decision-making process.

The consequences for Europe can be random. Let me remind something that is not really acceptable to remember. Russia is not “home to elephants,” [a popular phrase meaning that the Russian nation is unique. – Ed.], but it is home to totalitarianism. The first totalitarian project was Russian and it started in 1917. It is conventionally believed that it enjoyed the sympathy of leftist intellectuals and artists, who managed to close their eyes to many things, like Bernard Shaw, who failed to notice the Holodomor. But there was another influence of the Russian experiment.

The rise of Russian totalitarianism largely caused the failure of the democratic model of development in Central European countries, with the exception of Czechoslovakia. The demonstration effect of the Soviet government inspired its opponents more than its supporters. The real democratization of Europe started, perhaps, with the Marshall Plan, that is, it was caused by an external stimulus.

And nowadays no one can predict in which way the elimination of Ukrainian sovereignty, forced by Yanukovych, will influence the rest of Europe. Many politicians may find such position of the ruling elite alluring: when a few hundreds of Berkut riot police become a political force, which outweighs a million and a half of people who gathered on Maidan. But there is one detail: it was not only Yanukovych, but the Kremlin as well, who stood behind Berkut.

Alas, this is also obvious and must be repeated over and over: after the Yalta Conference the fate of Central and Eastern European nations has been decided in the Kremlin. It allowed velvet revolutions, but it did not allow for the European integration of Ukraine to take place. There is an even less pleasant point: Maidan does not reflect the sentiments of the entire Ukrainian population. Yanukovych transferred the source of his legitimacy to the Kremlin, thus strengthening his positions, but he has always had his own social resource. And there is a good opportunity to expand it. He is the savior of the motherland and breadwinner for many now.

I have already written about the Russification of Yanukovych’s government and his consistent legislative reforms in the punitive and prohibitive direction. But nobody wants to see the Russification of Maidan. In a little more than a month, it went from strategic (I do not recognize the term “geopolitics”) demands to populism and social voyeurism, which ruined Russian democratic opposition. What is more important: European integration or the mansions of Yanukovych and Co.?

And is it a coincidence that the opposition is repeating everything that was done and is still being done in Russia, where the shocking publications, containing description of rooms in mansions of Putin’s grandees, do not stop them from passing laws allowing to imprison anyone on accelerated investigation procedure. Or from introducing a prohibition on the profession of journalist. Technologies of distracting the opposition from making decisions are really similar in both countries.

The final blow to the democratic opposition in Russia was delivered when it began to use xenophobic slogans. The following can be seen in Ukraine now. Ukrainian political nationalism is not established yet, a single Ukrainian political nation, which would unite diverse ethnic, sub-ethnic, and cultural compounds, has not been created yet. Now the danger of degradation of nationalism and replacement of its creative potential with destructive hostility to Russians, and everything Russian in the first place, is becoming real in Ukraine. But if such a model of nationalism dominates, it will mean the end of European integration and civic consolidation.

It is not only about the moral side of the problem, but also about the fact that when the conversation is downgraded to accusing one nation of stealing the other’s Christmas carols (Russians were just now accused of it, I saw it myself), and to arguments about the nation’s antiquity and origins, about its right to the name “Rus’,” the main thing is omitted: the analysis of development and cooperation of the Ukrainian and Russian nations in modern history. I will allow myself a quote from a book that was published long ago, but in my opinion, it contains arguments that are relevant now:

“The nation is one of the historic forms of the ethnos’ existence: an ethno-social organism of the new European epoch, that is, an ethnos which has civil society and constitutional national state. In other words, a nation appears in the process and as a result of modernization. When the unique features of national cultures were formed, when the social and cultural aspects took over the biological, primeval, archetypic: the common feature of all nations. The national self-identity is adequate to the self-identity of a new European society, based on the recognition of sovereignty and the priority of the individual.

“The national peculiarities should not be sought for in the traditional society, which is so similar in various peoples; not in the archetypes, common for all ethnoses; not in the ancient paganism, but in the New Times, when Christianity overcame the medieval compromise with paganism (here I refer to Solovyov).”

So, in this comparison of Russian and Ukrainian history we come to a conclusion that national states were not created in both cases. Russians have always been replacing it with an empire. In Ukraine, natiogenesis has been developing without forming a single national state, which trend is quite European, if we recall various historical periods of the Polish, Italian, German, or Greek nations. And this recent attempt was not successful either. But the nation does exist, it develops in these failures. Fumes of imperialism are far more dangerous for nations than a string of such failures.

And when it comes to people at Maidan...

The black rider of Holodomor

flew over Maidan

packs of ghouls in alleyways

angry crowds of people

only decades after this

come ethos pathos, all those things

we must survive here and now

if they burn to ashes

our hope, not our belongings

if God does not give us strength

to start all over

what nobody ever

managed to do