Independence and Unity
On January 22, 1918, the Ukrainian Central Rada proclaimed the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) “sovereign and independent,” while a year later the newborn West Ukrainian National (the Socialists were out of power there, so national seems the more appropriate translation, although they used the same word) Republic and UNR solemnly proclaimed their unification, timed to coincide with the former anniversary. With a new Independence Day to celebrate, the people here have left the next holiday as that of unification. The point is that neither worked out very well, and this is as good a time as any to ponder why.
Due to tsarist oppression the Ukrainians were sociologically ill prepared for independence at the end of World War I, in the words of the founding father of Ukrainian sociology Mykyta Shapoval, “30,000 intellectuals, including the semi-intelligentsia, and thirty million peasants” (an exaggeration, but not by much). The cities were overwhelmingly non-Ukrainian, and were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic, about being bound in a democracy with a peasant majority, in whose wisdom the city-folk had little confidence. The Ukrainian movement was organized, primarily through a very successful cooperative movement, but had been fed from the start on ideas of socialist federalism, had a limited understanding of what a state has to do in order to survive, and split over how much “social justice” could be afforded, which is one reason neither independence nor unity succeeded at the time.
In 1991 as well, there were real questions about the preparedness of Ukrainians for independence, which they received, just like in 1918, on a wave of popular enthusiasm. The trouble is that there was and still is really no subjectively self-aware Ukrainian nation to exercise that independence and real questions about how much the now independent former Union republic nomenklatura running the country is committed to anything beyond what they can put in their pockets. The outside world is losing patience with the new sick man of Europe, and regardless of what anyone says, those running Ukraine have very limited time to clean up their act.
