Ukraine is not Russia: a look at the Ukrainian "Mein Kampf" 30 years later
At the time of the collapse of the USSR, I was 5 years old, naturally, at that age I could not fully understand what was happening, and even more so, there could be no question of giving any assessment to the events and actions of certain political figures.
In the light of the ongoing events, many of my fellow citizens of my age and younger may be asked the question - what did happen then? What was it? When did it start and, most importantly, did Russia and Ukraine have a chance for a different development of events?
Trying to find answers to these questions, I decided that the best way would be to return to the point when Ukraine became an independent state. The book “Ukraine is not Russia” is an explanatory book, as the author himself, the second president of Ukraine, Leonid Danilovich Kuchma, called it.
Its importance for me, as a reader, in the context of the questions posed lies in the fact that it was Kuchma who largely determined the initial conditions for Ukraine, and, most importantly, he himself vector development of Ukrainian statehood. Kuchma is the only president of Ukraine who managed to stay in power for 2 presidential terms. In his book, I found answers (at least for myself) to the voiced questions. And now I want to share my thoughts with readers.
Prologue
While reading the first chapters of the book, I had the feeling that the author was trying to "sit on two chairs", constantly maneuvering between contradictions.
On the one hand, he speaks of the need to build an exclusive "national" Ukrainian state in Ukraine. This is indicated by the huge amount of text devoted to the rigid and uncompromising dissociation of Ukrainians from Russians.
Kuchma is not satisfied with the perception of Russians even as "distant relatives." Emphasis is repeatedly placed on Ukrainian identity, historicity, mentality and its difference from Russian.
And, therefore, since the Ukrainians so different from the Russians, that we are talking about a separate country, then the new country should live in Ukrainian. From this point on, the controversy begins.
Kuchma claims that as a "guarantor" he cared about the rights of all peoples in Ukraine. But the question arises - if Ukraine is multinational, and Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians (USSR in miniature) live on its territory, then what is the point in secession from the USSR? Just cut off a small slice of the USSR so that a handful of adventurers get power?
What kind of "independence" was it then? Independence of whom and from whom? If Kuchma proclaims its entire national composition as an integral part of the new Ukraine, then for ethnic Russians we are talking about independence from Russians (Russia)?
image of a democratic president
In one of the chapters, Kuchma accused Yeltsin of not wanting to lose the image of a democratic president, since at that time it was precisely the commitment to "democracy" that allowed many yesterday's "comrades" to "surface" to the surface of political life.
Against the background of such remarks about Yeltsin, the following quote looks very curious
and in Russia and, oddly enough, in Ukraine, there are millions of people who still do not perceive this simple truth (“Ukraine is not Russia.” - Approx. Aut.), for them my book may not be superfluous.
Kuchma actually admits that in Ukraine itself there are people (and we are talking about a period of time after 10 years of “independence” of Ukraine!), who consider themselves Ukrainians, but do not share his views on the degree of separation of Russians and Ukrainians. At the same time, while proclaiming himself a democrat, Kuchma does not declare in relation to this category of citizens that he respects their views.
On the contrary, with regard to them, he directly states that their opinion is just a “mistake” and a “misunderstanding” (well, they “do not perceive” the “correct” ideas), which should not determine the course of Ukraine. It turns out that Ukrainian democracy from the very beginning did not work for everyone.
Conciliar or Federalist?
Ukraine seems to be woven from distinctly different historical areas. For the indifferent and enemies, this is like a patchwork quilt. For those who love Ukraine - a pattern full of deep meaning and beauty.
Did Kuchma understand that the reverse side of such “beauty” is that different parts of this pattern have different views on many important issues for the country? And consequently, before the Ukrainian statehood, whatever it may be, there is an extremely difficult task - to balance these views within the framework of one country.
A number of Ukrainian figures of the past understood the problem and proposed a federal structure for an "independent" Ukraine as a solution. Such a step would help reduce tensions within Ukrainian society and would allow individual historical regions of Ukraine to have greater autonomy within a single country.
Prominent Ukrainian nationalists, including Mykhailo Hrushevsky, also supported federalization at various times.
Here I have to make a small digression. In the process of preparing the article, I came across heated debates, both on Russian and Ukrainian sites. Anticipating a similar development of events in the comments, I want to analyze this situation.
Disputes were held regarding the words of V.V. Putin.
The Russian leader noted that in the fundamental works of Ukrainian nationalists of the XNUMXth century it is written that Ukraine is multinational, should be a federal state, and it is necessary to “build good relations with Russia”.
A number of commentators have accused Putin of forgery. And the appeal to the authority of the Ukrainian nationalists of the past (who were unlike the current intellectuals) was sought to be presented as a kind of “passing game” between Medvedchuk and Putin. One example of such a position is as follows
I am by no means a historian, but I will speak out.
The Russian leader is not a historian either. I am 99,999% sure that V.V. Putin did not read the works, and even more so the “fundamental” ones, by the Ukrainian nationalists of the XNUMXth century, just as I did not read them either. Then where did our V.V. Putin get this information from? Answer: Putin retells to the people the words of his godfather, the Ukrainian nationalist Medvedchuk.
The Russian leader is not a historian either. I am 99,999% sure that V.V. Putin did not read the works, and even more so the “fundamental” ones, by the Ukrainian nationalists of the XNUMXth century, just as I did not read them either. Then where did our V.V. Putin get this information from? Answer: Putin retells to the people the words of his godfather, the Ukrainian nationalist Medvedchuk.
In reality, Putin "told the people" the words of not only Medvedchuk, but also Kuchma. Since in the chapter “Conciliar or federalist”, among other things, Kuchma writes the following:
I specifically studied the biography of Grushevsky, and not only from a natural interest in this great man, but also because Hrushevsky was actually the first president of Ukraine, and the portrait gallery of our presidents is still small. I will say right away: Mikhail Sergeevich Grushevsky, the father of Ukrainian independence, was inclined to overestimate the perfection of the human race.
As his biographers write, in the idea of federalism he saw the ideal of justice, in this idea for him converged, as in a focus, all the brightest - equality, democracy, self-government and socialism.
As his biographers write, in the idea of federalism he saw the ideal of justice, in this idea for him converged, as in a focus, all the brightest - equality, democracy, self-government and socialism.
And further.
Moreover, for a long time he was convinced, quite in the spirit of his socialist ideology, that the principle consistently put into practice democratic federalism makes the full state independence of Ukraine optional. That's what I thought then he is not alone. Ukrainian National Congress in April 1917, under the impression of the democratic February Revolution in Petrograd, he adopted a resolution on establishing relations between Ukraine and the peoples of Russia on a federal basis.
This situation cannot but indicate the extremely low level of awareness of modern supporters of “independence” - a “duck” got into the information field that Putin refers to Medvedchuk, and there was not a single person who would write in the comments that, in fact, Kuchma wrote the same thing. Why read books if there are people like Arestovich who will tell Ukrainians who they are and where they come from?
But let us return to the further discussion of our topic.
Having outlined Grushevsky's position, Kuchma enters into a dispute in absentia with him. And if before that he criticized his opponents more rudely, exposing them as "silly people" who "do not understand the problems of Ukraine", then with respect to Hrushevsky he acts ingratiatingly and cautiously, understanding his authority.
At the same time, the difference in the level of preparation of the participants in this “correspondence polemic” is striking. Grushevsky is a professional academic historian who has been dealing with the very “problematics of Ukraine” all his life, moreover, in the context of relations with Russia. Kuchma himself gives an exhaustive description of his competence - "and in our village club there is a wonderful selection of literature."
Ukrainian radicals
To complete the picture, I consider it necessary to make some digression from the works of Kuchma and introduce the reader to other important characters and their ideas. Without this digression, the picture of what is happening will be incomplete.
The ideas voiced by Kuchma seemed to me very similar to the ideas of Dontsov and Korchinsky, with the only difference being that Kuchma expressed them “politically correct” and “diplomatically” – they say, there are unintelligent Ukrainians who foolishly have a different view on the fate of Ukraine. The above-mentioned characters expressed their thoughts more straightforwardly, openly dividing Ukrainian society into "Cossacks" and "swineherds". That is, essentially implying the caste system of society.
The quotes below are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute propaganda of the ideas of their authors. On the contrary, they are published in the context of criticism of such views.
Throughout the history of Ukraine, two psychological types of Cossacks and swineherds have been fighting.
However, the greatest hatred, not theoretical, but purely physiological, in us is caused not so much by the image of a predatory and insidious mondialist somewhere far away, but by the image of our own, Kyiv or Lvov swineherd.
The fact that generations of adherents of such views were brought up in Ukraine allows us to take a fresh look at the reports about why some Ukrainian units show such indifference to the fate of the civilian Ukrainian population that ended up in the NVO zone, not to mention the civilian population of the DPR and LPR .
The attitude of these units to peaceful "Ukrainians" as to "cattle" is not at all an invention of Russian propagandists, but a documented position of a number of Ukrainian nationalists.
Speaking about the roots of the “Ukrainian Cossacks”, one cannot fail to mention what it was like in the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. In fact, it was an association of Cossacks with primitive self-government bodies, successively replacing each other. The Cossacks constantly maneuvered between the larger external "players" in the region - the Russian Empire, Poland, Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, from conflict to conflict taking the side of one or the other.
The relationship between some representatives of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks and Russia can be characterized by such a distinction as the Order of Judas.
The Order of Judas is an order made in a single copy in 1709 by order of Tsar Peter I to “reward” Hetman I. S. Mazepa for going over to the side of Sweden in the Northern War.
Mazepa himself “was viewed by historiography and official journalism of the Russian Empire as a traitor to the state. In modern Ukraine, he is revered as a national hero.
Poroshenko at the unveiling of the monument to Mazepa in 2016
Ukraine is anti-Russia
Our main difficulties with Russia do not lie where they are usually seen by the Ukrainian media. Among our problems there is one that is solved to a rather painful extent. Decades will pass before my compatriots can safely say to themselves that it has been solved. This is not a Russian-Ukrainian problem. This is a Ukrainian problem. But it is closely connected with Russia.
It is about our identity and our psychology. Political scientists and sociologists of Ukraine agree that the processes of consolidation of the Ukrainian nation are still far from complete. We still don't fully understand who we are.
One of the important components of Ukrainian self-identification lies in the formula: Ukraine is not Russia.
It is about our identity and our psychology. Political scientists and sociologists of Ukraine agree that the processes of consolidation of the Ukrainian nation are still far from complete. We still don't fully understand who we are.
One of the important components of Ukrainian self-identification lies in the formula: Ukraine is not Russia.
This is perhaps the most important quote in the entire book, because in this short passage, Kuchma bluntly states that when starting a project called Ukraine, no one could articulate exactly who the Ukrainians were.
Some liberals put the question in this way - poor, unfortunate Ukraine, inhabited by "Ukrainians", is trying to self-determine, and big Russia insidiously hinders them in this noble cause.
However, the situation is somewhat different. In Ukraine was и offers a category of citizens that has very specific views on what it means to be Ukrainian. This is also expressed in the opening of the monument to Mazepa, the very fact of the opening of which declares the position that the Ukrainian is a traitor to Russia. And in the already voiced positions of the Ukrainian radicals. In these positions, I did not see any poetic rambling and uncertainty.
Another thing is that Kuchma simply could not voice it then at the official level. By voicing this directly and decisively, this would not allow him to maintain the image of a “democrat”, and the reaction of the traditionally Russian-oriented regions would be tougher, as would Russia’s position, at least on the issue of Crimea.
At the same time, when discussing who Ukrainians are, I consider it important to consider two examples from the cinema.
The first example is an excerpt from a documentary (1941 Ukrainians in Smolensk. Ukrainians in Smolensk (Russia)), filmed in Germany, in which the image of a Ukrainian, in the words of the Ukrainian classic, is “painted in the colors in which he is painted”.
And another passage, already from the USSR.
It becomes obvious that the title of "Ukrainian" is claimed by people who have not just different, but opposite and even irreconcilable views.
One part considered themselves Ukrainians, more or less oriented towards Russian civilization, the other - Ukrainians, supporters of Mazepa and Bandera.
This struggle has taken place throughout history, but since 2014 it has entered the terminal stage. Then the West began to actively support the anti-Russian agenda, and the slogan “Ukraine = not Russia" began to transform more and more into "Ukraine = anti-Russia".
At the same time, Western media presented Ukraine to their viewers exclusively as a country that unequivocally made its choice in favor of the West. She did this ostensibly freely and democratically, although at the same time the following events were taking place:
Based on the foregoing, one disappointing conclusion can be drawn. Ukrainian society was initially divided into pro-Russian and pro-Western components, but instead of trying to balance the contradictions through federalization, the path of centralization of power was chosen.
Kuchma played a key role in this matter, primarily because he was very close to the origins of the “independence” of Ukraine, and in subsequent periods of centralized power, federalization was already unprofitable. Nobody wanted to share the powers they had, and above all in the context of the redistribution of financial flows.
This issue is well covered in this speech by Muraev. At the end of the video, it is said to whom this option was unprofitable and why.
Ultimately, the anti-Russian ideologies historically formed in Ukraine became a very convenient tool for our Western geopolitical opponents. Since 2014, Ukraine has finally lost its independence and sovereignty, completely turning into a battering ram against Russia, and the further development of events was practically predetermined.
The answer to the question of when this began can also be a quote from the already mentioned Korchinsky. This interview was published back in 2000.
El.: In assessing your internal situation, do you take into account the factor of American or, more broadly, mondialist pressure, and how is it manifesting itself inside Ukraine at the moment?
DK: Naturally, we take it into account, especially since the role of this factor is quite large. As an example, the following remark can be cited: over the past year, the United States has invested a meager amount of $3 million in the Ukrainian economy, while they have invested two or three orders of magnitude more in politics. It's also not very much, but it's much more. Both the American embassy and the AFL-CIO office in Kyiv are trying very hard to influence the processes taking place in Ukraine, as well as the mass of so-called American public institutions and foundations that are represented in Ukraine.
DK: Naturally, we take it into account, especially since the role of this factor is quite large. As an example, the following remark can be cited: over the past year, the United States has invested a meager amount of $3 million in the Ukrainian economy, while they have invested two or three orders of magnitude more in politics. It's also not very much, but it's much more. Both the American embassy and the AFL-CIO office in Kyiv are trying very hard to influence the processes taking place in Ukraine, as well as the mass of so-called American public institutions and foundations that are represented in Ukraine.
At the same time, we must be very careful in the current realities with the word "Ukrainian", remembering that there is an understanding of the Ukrainian not only "according to Bandera" or Mazepa, but also "according to Leonid Bykov."
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