How did we get to this? The wider perspective.
Ukraine’s history is complicated and does lend itself to different interpretations but I’m going to attempt to give an overview of that history with enough detail as to shed some light on today’s controversies, but hopefully without getting bogged down in too much detail. I do make the presumption that I am talking to an intelligent and interested audience (come on, there’s nothing wrong with a little flattery) so, I think you will bear with me. However, it will be a challenge – much of this is history that is new to me – and it will take a few episodes of this new podcast of mine. But I think it’s worth giving it a try. This is such a critically important issue. One which we need to understand, and history can help in that.
I grew up calling Ukraine, “the Ukraine”, never knowing that most Ukrainians hated it. Why? Because it indicates that Ukraine is a region rather than a state in its own right. And whilst I have to admit, I did in fact see it as a region, most Ukrainians have always seen themselves as a country in their own right, and wanted the rest of the world to see them that way. Well, most of us do now!
“Ukraine” means borderland which immediately gives us an idea of just why it might be a disputed territory. And I must say upfront that history has left Russia with strong ties to Ukraine. Most Ukrainians speak Russian as well as Ukrainian and one-third of Ukrainians (mostly in eastern Ukraine) do identify closely with Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had the second biggest population of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics and today, still has the largest ethnic Russian population outside of Russia itself, eight million in 2001. There were emotional ties too. The first Russian state called Kievan Rus’ was established in Kyiv some twelve centuries ago. And it was in Kyiv that Christianity was brought from Byzantium to the Slavic peoples. So that, Kyiv, though it be Ukraine’s capital, is sometimes referred to as “the mother of Russian cities”, up there in importance with Moscow and St. Petersburg.
And yet, in the referendum of 1991 in which 84% of the electorate voted, slightly more than 92% voted in favour of Ukraine’s declaration of independence; an overwhelming majority.
But in this episode, I’m going to move away from Ukraine itself in order to look at the bigger picture: the relationship between Vladimir Putin and the West. And I think you will soon see why it is important to do so.
Putin has not always been painted as the bad guy by the West. When President Clinton phoned on New Year’s Day, 2000 to congratulate him on his appointment as acting President following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, Putin told him that although there were issues on which the two countries disagreed, hopefully there were also core themes on which they were in agreement. And when Clinton called him in March, 2000, this time to congratulate him on his election as president, Putin said he hoped that ‘it is clear to the whole world that I am a person you can work with.’ Tony Blair was convinced that Putin wanted a good relationship with America and that he wanted to introduce economic and democratic reforms. Whilst George W. Bush described his support of America after 9/11 as simply ‘amazing’ and said how much he appreciated ‘his willingness to move beyond the suspicions of the past’. So, what went wrong?
The roots of the problem pre-date Putin’s presidency, for they lie with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia lost almost 50% of the Soviet Union’s population, including tens of millions of Russian speakers stranded on the “other” side of borders, and it lost a little over 40% of its GDP. Crucially, Russia also lost its cherished status as a global power. It could no longer regard itself as America’s equal. Little wonder Putin has repeatedly described the Soviet Union’s collapse as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
NATOs continued existence, indeed its expansion, after the demise of the Soviet Union, and with it, the East European bloc and the Warsaw Pact, clearly rankled. Just after George W. Bush was elected, Putin said: ‘NATO still exists. What for? We all say that we don’t want Europe to be divided, we don’t want new borders and barriers, new ‘Berlin Walls’ dividing the continent. But when NATO expands, the border doesn’t go away. It simply moves closer to Russia.’ Clearly he wasn’t happy. And he had a point.
Francis Richards, who at that time was head of GCHQ, the British intelligence and security agency, recalled how ‘We were quite grateful for Putin’s support after 9/11, but we didn’t show it very much. I used to spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people that we needed to give as well as take . . . I think the Russians felt throughout that [on NATO issues] they were being fobbed off. And they were.’
And there were those in Moscow, that Putin had to deal with, fellow politicians, the state bureaucracy and the military, who felt Russia was giving too much and getting too little. Putin still felt that a rapprochement with the West best served Russia’s economic and security interests, but the critics of that rapprochement were voices Putin couldn’t ignore forever.
By the end of Putin’s first presidential term, in 2004, evidence seemed to be piling up on the side of Putin’s domestic critics. America had ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and was developing a national missile defence programme. America had also invaded Iraq in 2003. And in 2004 America had supported the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which to the Kremlin was tantamount to promoting regime change on Russia’s borders (I intend to focus on the Orange Revolution in my next episode).
Also in 2004, NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders when seven countries joined the alliance: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the last three being former Soviet republics. It was NATOs biggest expansion ever. And in 2008 NATO responded positively when Ukraine and Georgia declared they, too, wanted to join the alliance (though we should also note that Germany and France said they would veto any such proposal). This, Russia saw as nothing less than an existential threat and Putin rejected the West’s argument that NATOs expansion was only a response to requests for membership. As far as he was concerned, those requests could be politely declined. In December, 2021, months before the invasion of Ukraine, he revised the argument put forward by Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, that American missiles were in Turkey and Italy, arguing now that America would feel very differently if Russia was putting missiles in Mexico or Canada.
We need to consider Putin’s perspective on the nuclear issue. Russia has almost 6,000 nuclear warheads, America has almost 5,500 (though Britain and France are also nuclear powers). Now these warheads will be of varying power (though the vast majority will be much more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and they will be at the sharp end of different delivery systems, missiles, nuclear submarines and planes, also there are defence systems to consider; but we can take as a given that each side has enough fire power to obliterate the other.
But America (through NATO) is the only nuclear power in the world to have nuclear weapons based in other countries. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America removed all its nuclear missiles from Europe. However, it still has nuclear bombs in Europe. Sources I have researched suggest it has anywhere between 100 and 240 nuclear bombs in five countries: Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy and Turkey. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament puts the total number of bombs roughly in the middle of that range: up to 20 in Belgium, Holland and Germany, up to 70 in Italy and up to 50 in Turkey. And again, each is many times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So, there is a need to look at Putin’s perspective – how would America feel if he put missiles in Mexico or Canada? – with some care. On the one hand, he has a point – America has nuclear weapons in Europe and a defensive alliance with European countries that is growing and has Russia in its sights as its main potential enemy. And we all know the maxim: ‘the best form of defence is attack’. So, he feels Russia is threatened. Whereas in the European theatre, he surely has an overwhelming advantage when it comes to a nuclear threat, as well as also having an advantage in the global theatre, at least in numbers (we will never know how well each side’s nuclear system works unless they are used – so, we hope we will never find out!).
So, for Putin and his advisers in the Kremlin, a Ukraine that is leaning increasingly to the West, a Ukraine that wants to join NATO, with many within NATO favouring such a move, is a very real threat, an existential threat, to Russia.
The Orange Revolution and its Fallout
This episode will look at the Orange Revolution of 2004 which should be seen as a watershed, marking the end of the early post-Soviet era and setting the stage for the new Cold War climate that defines today’s relations between Russia and the West.
For the protests of late 2004 succeeded in preventing Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych from stealing the Ukrainian presidency (Putin had even gone to Kyiv to urge support for his man), and made possible the election of his reformist rival, Viktor Yushchenko. Even if Yushchenko’s disappointing time in office allowed Yanukovych to mount a comeback and win the 2010 presidential election.
What happened was that the state-controlled media proclaimed a victory for Yanukovych, when credible exit polls gave victory to Yushchenko. Reports were also circulating of voter intimidation and damaged ballot papers. And whilst Yanukovych had benefited from the biased reporting of the state-controlled television which portrayed Yushchenko as weak and in the pockets of America, Yushchenko had been poisoned during the campaign which left him horribly disfigured (a Kremlin tactic the West would also learn about). But many Ukrainians were tired of the old corrupt regime whilst younger Ukrainians were increasingly identifying themselves with the West: whether that be based on free elections and intellectual freedom or pop music and fashion, it was the West they preferred. In response, for seventeen days over a million ordinary Ukrainians (who, in any case, knew which way they had voted), bravely took to the streets in Kyiv and other cities and demanded to be heard.
Disappointing though Yushchenko’s presidency might have been (it was marred by scandals), it nevertheless led to a very different Ukraine than had existed before. The media may have mostly represented different dubious elites, but it was at least now free of government censorship. But a more profound change had taken place in the way ordinary Ukrainians saw their country and its relationship with Russia. Whereas before 2004 they saw Ukraine as still tied to Russia, within its ‘sphere of influence’, after 2004 they saw their democratic credentials as marking a difference between themselves and Russia, more in tune with their fellow-Europeans to the west. Indeed, Putin’s attempt to intervene in the 2004 elections only served to highlight this in Ukrainian minds and served to spark the Orange Revolution. For the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union, they saw their independence as being under threat.
Whereas Russia viewed Ukraine’s actions and those of the West – Europe as well as America – as treacherous, a betrayal. And from 2004 onwards, there would be little in the way of Russian co-operation with the West. Rather, Russia, domestically, set about increasing a sense of nationalism amongst the Russian people, and quashing opposition to Putin, whilst internationally, it set on a course to confront the West and to regain control of its former states.
The response began in the field of propaganda – by the end of 2005, Russia Today, an English-language tv channel, was broadcasting to audiences around the world. The channel soon became a major source of anti-Western/pro-Russian propaganda. But it was a speech Putin gave at a security conference in Munich in 2007 that announced Russia’s hostile stance. In the speech he complained that Russia’s concerns were not being heard by the West, and the West would need to receive a shock before they would be heard. So forthright was the speech that Bill Burns, the American Ambassador in Moscow, cabled the White House saying the message was: “We’re back, and you’d better get used to it!”
However, Putin might have given vent to his true feelings when he told a group of Russian journalists, ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Whether we speak out or keep silent – there’ll always be some pretext for attacking Russia. In this situation, it is better to be frank.’ He went on to say how the West saw itself as ‘shining white, clean and pure’ whereas it saw Russia as ‘some kind of monster that has only just crawled out of the forest, with hooves and horns.’
Henceforth Putin’s disillusionment with the West only deepened and most of his foreign policy initiatives can be seen as payback for what the Kremlin regarded as anti-Russian moves by the West.
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 though the circumstances – both reasons and outcome – were different to Ukraine last year and, for that matter, to Crimea in 2014. The rationale behind Russia’s move ostensibly was to protect the people of South Ossetia which, when the Soviet Union broke up, had wanted to separate from Georgia which itself had declared its independence from Russia. An uneasy agreement had been made by the three parties in 1992 but in 2004 the Georgians elected a right-wing nationalist who wanted to bring South Ossetia back under Georgian sovereignty (an idea rejected by the South Ossetians in a referendum in 2006). He had also wanted closer ties with the European Union and NATO membership which didn’t warm him to Russia but it wasn’t the reason for Russia’s invasion. Fighting broke out between South Ossetia and Georgia in 2008 and when Georgia launched a concerted air and ground attack on South Ossetia’s main city, Tskhinvali, Russia invaded Georgia. The war lasted just five days before the Georgians sued for peace. An Bottom of Formindependent report commissioned by the EU in 2009 found that Georgia had started the conflict even if Russia had played a part in provoking it.
The Chechen Wars both preceded and post-dated the invasion of Georgia: the first war lasting from 1994 to 1995 and the second from 1999 to 2009, and have closer links to the war in Ukraine with Russia determined to squash the separatist movement in Chechnya. Like Georgia and Ukraine, Chechnya declared independence in 1991 but unlike Georgia and Ukraine, Chechnya was not one of the fifteen semi-autonomous republics of the Soviet Union but a republic within the newly formed Russian Federation. However, Chechens were ethnically very different from Russians. But Chechnya was also an unstable political entity and Chechen nationalists took their fight for independence into Russia with a terrorist campaign. Most infamously in 2002 when a group of Chechen militants seized a Moscow theatre and took nearly 700 spectators and performers hostage. In the ensuing rescue operation, some 130 hostages died. The uneasy outcome of the wars was that whilst more power was devolved to Chechnya, the republic remained in the Russian Federation and its leadership was approved by Moscow. An ominous outcome of the second Chechen War, however, was that it transformed Putin – he was now Russia’s most popular politician.
So, the Orange Revolution of 2004 was indeed a watershed: it created a more assertive Russia, a more aggressive Russia; domestically it created a nationalist surge and riding on the back of that, Putin became more and more authoritarian, more and more like a dictator. Russia was no longer, if it ever was, on a democratic path.
4, Kievan Rus’ and the ‘gathering of the Russian lands’
In this third episode explaining the war in Ukraine, I am going to go back to the origins of both Russia and Ukraine: to a land known as Kievan Rus and, in 15-20 minutes take us through around a thousand years of history! But believe me, what’s happened in the past, even long ago in the past, really matters. And I think this history is really important in understanding what’s happening in Ukraine today. So, here goes!
The territories that we now call the Russian Federation and Ukraine were once, in medieval times (the 10th and 11th centuries to be more precise), part of Kievan Rus, the largest and most powerful state in Europe at the time. Its territory stretched from the Baltic Sea almost to the Black Sea incorporating the western borders of today’s Russian Federation, as well as Belarus and Ukraine, and parts of Romania, Moldavia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland too.
It is important to our explanation because whilst Ukrainians see the Kievan Rus’ as the cradle of modern Ukraine, Putin and most Russians, see the same history as proof of the origin of a common ancestry of Russians, Ukrainians and also Bielorussians; and so, Ukrainians are seen as Russian and Ukraine is seen as Russian land. When all the time, Kyiv was actually founded in the ninth century by Viking warriors in order to trade with the Byzantine Empire, the eastern half of the old Roman Empire, but that’s a whole other story.
Our story gets complicated when towards the end of the tenth century, the Prince of Kyiv adopted Christianity but he did so under the influence of Byzantium, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which became known as Constantinople before changing its name again to Istanbul. This is important because it meant that Kievan Rus became part of the Orthodox Christian Church, not the Catholic Church, which of course was, and is, based in Rome. And so, Ukrainians also share their spiritual faith with Russians and Bielorussians.
Crimea, just as it is a part of today’s story, is part of this one too. It had been taken by Kievan Rus in the tenth century but in the first half of the thirteenth century, Kievan Rus fell to the Tatars, the Turkik tribe that dominated the western parts of the Mongol Empire, known as the Golden Horde. Kyiv was destroyed in 1240 and Kievan Rus was broken up. However, the Mongols didn’t benefit from their victory. Their Great Khan died the following year and they fought amongst themselves. What would become significant though was that a khan of the Golden Horde (a khan is a tribal or local ruler) converted to Islam in the early fourteenth century and made it the official religion of the Golden Horde. By the early fifteenth century, the Golden Hoard disintegrated and, in its place, independent khanates emerged, one of them being the Crimean Khanate.
This religious dimension, took on even greater significance when the Byzantine Empire was overthrown in 1453 and the Ottoman Empire expanded into the Balkans. And in 1475 the Crimean Tatars, who were now Muslims, accepted Ottoman rule. From their Crimean stronghold, it was they who dominated the steppes in the sixteenth century. Meanwhile, most of Ukraine came under the control of the Kingdom of Poland with most of today’s Belarus falling under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would you believe. In response, Moscow’s religious leaders declared Moscow to be the ‘Third Rome’, head of the Orthodox Church. And Ivan III, the Grand Prince of Muscovy (we could call it Russia), took on the title of Tsar which is derived from Caesar; that is, from the Roman and Byzantine empires, and from that point on tsars regarded themselves as protectors of the Orthodox faith and of all those who follow that faith. What is more, they felt justified in their quest to regain all the lost territories of Kievan Rus’ (the ‘gathering of the Russian lands’, as they viewed it) which included Ukraine. This was formalised in the sixteenth century, in the early years of Ivan the Terrible’s reign, by his leading prelate, and so myth became a legal right. It really was highly significant.
Yet throughout most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries western Ukraine developed under Polish dominion, or else Polish influence. The Orthodox Church was still a major influence but a significant number of Ukrainians became Catholic. The Uniate Church was established, which though Orthodox in ritual, recognised the Pope as its head. However, the Cossacks, in the Dnieper region in eastern Ukraine, continued to go their own way and when, in the mid-seventeenth century, the Poles attempted to bring them under their control too, it only drove them closer to the Russian Tsar and, in the Treaty of Pereiaslavl of 1654, in return for the Cossacks pledge of ‘eternal loyalty’, the Tsar accepted their autonomy and promised to protect them. And so, the Cossacks, who had long occupied the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, willingly tied themselves to the protection of tsarist Russia, or Muscovy, making another historical claim for Putin.
But the Cossack’s reneged on their oath of loyalty and sided with Sweden and Poland against Russia in the war that broke out in 1654. The war itself is not important to our story but it ended in something of a stalemate and in the Truce of Andrusovo of 1667, Ukraine was divided by the River Dnieper, Poland taking the lands west of the river, Russia taking the lands to the east as well as the eastern part of Bielorussia, today’s Belarus. Tsar Peter (Peter the Great) would have his revenge on the Cossacks and ruthlessly asserted Russian control.
And at this point I have to say that, as a Brit, I do see strong overlaps in British history: England’s historical claims on Scotland, Ireland and Wales, just as they use the same history to make their claims for independence.
Meanwhile, the Crimean Tatars, now Muslim remember, aided by hundreds of kilometeres of open steppe and backed by the Ottoman Empire, proved a difficult foe for the Russians to overcome. And a century later, they still hadn’t been brought under Russian, or Muscovy, control. This meant that the fertile lands of Ukraine couldn’t be developed as the Crimean Tatars were slavers and this discouraged would-be settlers.
But in 1771, Crimea finally fell to the Russians and it was made a protectorate and, twelve years later, in 1783, it was incorporated into the empire, whilst Russia also came to dominate the Black Sea’s northern coast. The Tatars suffered as a result: most of them fled, especially after the Crimean War in the nineteenth century (more of which to come) and with Russians, Ukrainians and others moving into Crimea, they became a minority in what had become their homeland. Muslims, unable to live in the Christian-dominated new order, also migrated whenever they had the means to do so.
The Russians had seen their agreements with Poland as just stepping stones in reclaiming ‘Little Russia’ (their pet name for Ukraine), and notably, by the end of the seventeenth century, the Orthodox Church in Kyiv had accepted the primacy of the Church in Moscow. Step by step, ‘Little Russia’ was being brought back into Moscow’s control. And in the middle of the eighteenth-century Russia further extended its control in western Ukraine, notably by encouraging settlement there.
And Poland, by this time, was a much-weakened power and was there for the taking. We are about to come to another critical point. In the last quarter of the eighteenth-century Poland was wiped off the map, partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia (the state that would go on to unify Germany). As we have seen, both Poland and Russia held claim to the Slavs of south-eastern Europe but Moscow was determined to ‘gather the Russian lands’, the lands lost when Kievan Rus’ collapsed at the hands of the Mongols back in the thirteenth century, parts of which Poland still held, and, in doing so, was spreading the power of Catholic Rome at the expense of the Orthodox Church and Moscow, the Third Rome. But Russia felt it had to include Austria and Prussia lest a major European war broke out as Russia became too powerful. As it was, Catherine II, the Russian Empress known as Catherine the Great, was still able to claim the return of, in her own words, ‘lands and citizens which once belonged to the Russian Empire, which are inhabited by their fellow-countrymen and are illuminated by the Orthodox faith.’ But which for Ukraine and Bielorussia, meant they were entirely subsumed into the Russian Empire.
The rural Ukrainian elite, to all intents and purposes, became Russian whilst the peasantry, though speaking a variety of Ukrainian dialects, had little in the way of a national Ukrainian identity, though this is not unusual: language and so, literacy, is important in the process of national identification. The cities, meanwhile, were cosmopolitan in nature with Russians but also Poles, Germans, Greeks and Jews. Any sense of a Ukrainian identity was only found amongst the intellectual class, and they were very small in number. And in 1832 Count Uvarov, in a report to the tsar, proclaimed three principles as truly Russian, principles that Ukraine seemed to meet: Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost, the national principle. A year later, Uvarov set up a new university in Kyiv with the purpose of spreading Russian language and culture. What is abundantly clear is that Moscow did not consider either Bielorussia or Ukraine to be nations. And so, in today’s context, we see another justification for Putin’s claim over Ukraine.
However, there were others who felt a federation of free Slavs was the way forward. The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, agreed. He was of the view that Ukraine was a distinct nationality but would benefit from membership of a federation of Slavs. For saying such, he paid a heavy price, he was put into the army and sent to the Urals and Tsar Nicholas I personally ordered that the great poet should be forbidden to write. But that didn’t stop Shevchenko’s poetry from playing a major role in developing a Ukrainian consciousness, even if it was still confined to an educated minority.
Then, in 1856, in what came to be called the Crimean War, Russia went to war with Turkey which was supported by Britain and France. The war was ostensibly the result of a dispute over the keys to the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem (a story I can’t divert to, fascinating though it is), because more significantly, it was a result of Russian demands to be able to protect Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire as well as a dispute over the rights of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in the Holy Lands (hence the issue over keys) And Russia lost. It didn’t lose Crimea but Russian naval ships were banned from sailing in the Black Sea and its Black Sea port, Sebastopol, was not to be refortified. And, of course, it would not hold any sway in the Ottoman Empire whilst the Orthodox Church lost its argument with the Catholic Church. But for us, it shows the importance Russia attached to defending the Orthodox faith.
I hope this episode has enabled you to understand the historical claims Russia has on Ukraine (and Crimea). That doesn’t mean to say those claims take priority over Ukraine’s own claims for sovereignty over its own lands. Indeed, if we look at this tale from a Ukrainian perspective, we can see that Russia, rather than holding rights to Ukraine, actually holds a debt to it. It was a key centre of old Kievan Rus and Kyiv was the birthplace of the Orthodox Church in the Slavic lands. Whilst it could be argued Russia conquered Ukraine (and Crimea and Bielorussia) rather than ‘gathering the Russian lands’. It really does remind me a lot of the history of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland where nationalism has, and continues to, unfold in the story of the British Isles.
5, Ukraine on the eve of WW1
By the end of the nineteenth century, industrialisation was changing the ethnic composition of Ukraine as Ukrainian peasants mostly preferred to stay on the land and so the jobs in the factories, plants and mines were increasingly filled by Russians. So the population of Russians living in Ukraine only increased. It was the same with the growing middle class: industrialists, merchants and professionals, they too were mostly Russian, though their numbers also included Poles, Germans and Jews.
However, Ukrainian nationalism, though still held back by the lack of literacy amongst the peasants, and the hold the Russians had on society, the restricted participation in matters of the state as well as its’ use of propaganda, was nevertheless gaining a little ground as the nineteenth century came to close. It was aided by the changes that followed in the wake of industrialisation: growing literacy, a growing Ukrainian middle class as well as the growing awareness of the increasing number of Russians now living in Ukraine. Consequently, the sense of a distinct Ukrainian culture developed as did interest in the Ukrainian language. The first journal in the Ukrainian language was established in 1861 and schools were established across the Ukraine which celebrated Ukrainian culture.
But this only brought about a reaction from Russians and there was a resurgence in Russianness, Russian values and the virtues of the Slav. There was a call for Russians of all ethnic backgrounds and cultures to unite as Russians, and to resist Western influences. The Ukrainians and the Bielorussians were seen as fellow-Slavs, ‘Little’ Russians and ‘White’ Russians respectively, and so a programme of Russification began.
In the aftermath of the Polish Revolt against Russian rule in 1863, the Russian authorities insisted on Russian as the language to be used everywhere in the empire, in local administration as well as the courts. The Ukrainian language in publications or public performances was banned in 1876. Not to do so, the edict said, would be to encourage the alienation of Ukraine from the rest of Russia and that to ‘permit the separation of thirteen million Little Russians would the utmost political carelessness, especially in view of the unifying movement which is going on alongside us in the German tribe.’ A hint as to why Russia might have gone to war with Germany.
Another edict laid down that the Ukrainian language could not be used in primary schools and that teachers should come from the Russian heartlands, while those teachers trained in the Ukrainian provinces should, it suggested, be moved to other regions. Higher education was a particular concern, seen to be a crucible for nationalism and opposition to the Russian state. And measures were taken to increase the use of the Russian language and courses on Russian history and Russian law were introduced.
But the national language, as well as being a central component of a person’s identity was, for the poorly educated peasantry, their access to their religion, political and civil rights, and their chance of social betterment. To expect them to learn a second language was simply unrealistic. How was it going to happen? And the ban on the use of the native language in education, government and legal systems ranged from the absurd to downright deadly. The Russians even made it illegal to print the word ‘Ukraine’ and during a cholera epidemic the medical committee in Kyiv refused to allow warning posters to be published in Ukrainian. Many peasants, unable to understand the warnings about drinking infected water, died as a result.
These measures did slow down the spread of national identity as it reduced the number of Ukrainian-speaking teachers and journalists, never mind Ukrainian-speaking students and readers, but Ukrainian literature was smuggled into Ukraine from Austrian Galicia which was populated by Ukrainians. And it alienated the Ukrainian intelligentsia which, as a result, radicalised; and this would come to the boil with the outbreak of war in 1914.
So, we can see in this period, beginning tentatively in the 1860s, becoming a little more visible in the 1870s a sense of Ukrainian nationalism amongst the Ukrainian intelligentsia which by 1905, when Tsarism received a jolt (tantamount to a revolution) and conceded a constitution, the resulting weakening of political control released nationalist forces in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Russian empire, that now targeted the peasantry. The nationalists scored points when reminding the peasantry that their land was mostly owned by Russians and Poles.
At this point, Ukrainian nationalism was helped by the 25% of Ukrainians, some 4 million people, who lived within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for those in the Austrian part of the empire enjoyed universal male suffrage from 1907 and had no constraints imposed on the freedom of their civil society. As a result, Austrian Galicia was at the heart of Ukrainian nationalism. In fact, the Austrians encouraged it. Firstly, to weaken Polish nationalism; and secondly, to weaken any notion that Russia was the leader of the Slav world. So, Galicia became a sanctuary for Ukrainian nationalists fleeing Russian persecution and could be seen as the cradle of the Ukrainian state. Here is where the Ukrainian narrative, their story, was really developed.
So much so, that there were influential Russian nationalists who, in the years preceding WW1, saw Ukraine and not Serbia, as the reason why Russia should prepare for war with Austria-Hungary. Ukraine was too important to the Russian economy: its agriculture, its industrial development and, through the Black Sea, its trade, and the argument that Russia must, at all costs, defend Ukraine was even stronger. And this is a point that Dominic Lieven, the Cambridge professor and a recognized expert on Russian history, is at pains to emphasise as, in the story of the Balkans, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and all the other factors that led to WW1, Ukraine is largely ignored, and shouldn’t be.
6, The Bolshevik response to the nationalist issue
When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in February 1917, a temporary or provisional government, somewhat reluctantly, took up the reigns until such time as elections could be held and a new constitution put in place. Not an easy thing to achieve with WW1 raging on Russian soil.
The nationalities issue didn’t seem quite so pressing at first. On the whole, nationalists, wherever they were found in the Russian empire, including Ukraine, wanted cultural freedom and greater control over their own affairs, but not independence. The events of 1917 had stirred up nationalist feelings in Ukraine, but only amongst the educated in the towns. The peasants, as in Russia, really just wanted land and for their village to be independent, free of outside interference, whatever its source and, to them, towns were themselves seen as “foreign”.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of March 1917, a Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, was formed and it set out to negotiate land reform, cultural freedoms and self-government; but not independence. Still, Ukrainian nationalism was at last asserting itself. It called on the Provisional Government to formally recognise Ukrainian autonomy, to provide for a commissar for Ukrainian affairs, separate Ukrainian army units (to be stationed in the rear), the appointment of Ukrainians to a majority of civil posts, and representation at a future peace conference. When the Provisional Government didn’t respond, the Ukrainian parliament declared autonomy anyway, announcing the establishment of a government in the process. This had the effect of forcing the Provisional Government to negotiate and it recognised both the parliament and the government. In protest, one of the leading parties in the Provisional Government, the Kadets, left it. Pavel Miliukov, the Kadet’s leader, referred to the decision as the ‘chopping up of Russia’.
But 1917 was to see two revolutions in Russia and the second, the Bolshevik Revolution, brought Lenin to power promising ‘peace, bread and land’. Marx hadn’t had a lot to say about nationalism. Ultimately, economic conditions and the class relationships they produced were more important than national differences. But nationalism was clearly an important issue to address in a multi-national empire in which Russians constituted slightly less than half the total population. Lenin’s position was that, whilst he didn’t think nations were a permanent entity, neither did he think they would just magically disappear with the onset of socialist revolutions. And Lenin understood that greater autonomy in Russia’s borderlands would have to be granted or else they may try to split altogether from Russia.
His policy preference was to allow nationalities to declare their independence if that is what they wanted, or assimilate with Soviet Russia. Whereas the nationalities, if they were to remain a part of Russia, wanted some degree of autonomy: a federal system. For only a federal system would prevent them being dominated by Russia.
Lenin felt he had to compromise. He didn’t want it to appear as if an empire was being built. But it was a matter of appearance rather than substance. Control at the centre, i.e. Moscow, would be maintained because it was the Party that would govern. And even local parties would be loyal to Moscow. But for Lenin, the pretence mattered. The existence of different nationalities and ethnic groups, and their different cultures, was recognised and was hopefully seen as the means by which separatism could be avoided. It would be a policy of “smoke and mirrors”.
The Bolsheviks had already set up a People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, headed by Stalin. It was actually set up before their revolution, in response to the stand-off between the Provisional Government and Ukraine’s rada. And immediately after the revolution, in November, 1917 the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia abolished national and ethnic privileges, i.e. those previously enjoyed by Russians, and called for a ‘voluntary and honourable union’ with the right of secession, i.e. independence, if that was what a republic wanted. And, in December, the Manifesto to the Ukrainian People held out the prospect of Ukraine taking its place in a federal system. The federal principle was repeated in Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People which called for a ‘free union of nations as a federation of Soviet republics.’ Lenin’s hope was that by allowing this to happen, the freed republics would establish socialist republics themselves and so, would quickly join with Russia. The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was duly declared in January, 1918.
Each republic would be a member state on equal terms and each was allowed their own culture and language, and their own national elites too – cultural self-determination – but no real political autonomy. They would be part of a unified Soviet Russia. Socialism, the one-party state and unity was non-negotiable. Written into the constitution was the ‘dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest’. But what is more, so was the denial of political rights to those who didn’t qualify as such: the right to vote was denied anyone who had an income from investments, or who had private businesses, or hired workers in their pursuit of profit. In other words, despite all Lenin’s positive words on ‘voluntary and honourable unions’, in Ukraine, and other republics, the RSFSR would be directed from the centre: the Party in Moscow. Consequently, enthusiasm for the Bolshevik Revolution in the republics was weak. In November, the Ukrainian rada declared a Ukrainian People’s Republic, promising a Constituent Assembly and land reform (which would mean ownership by the peasants). Yet still, they intended to remain a part of Russia – but an autonomous part (though how this could have possibly have worked out is anyone’s guess). No matter, the Bolsheviks organized an alternative congress in Kharkov and sent a force, tens of thousands strong, to Kyiv to enforce compliance with Moscow.
But events took another course as peace with Germany, which Lenin felt was desperately needed if the Revolution was to survive, meant a punitive treaty. The Treaty of Brest Litovsk, signed on March 3rd, 1918 was extremely harsh on Russia: Russia was obliged to give up all claims to a mass of territory: the Baltic provinces, Russian Poland, Bielorussia (today’s Belarus), Finland, Bessarabia (today’s Moldavia), Ukraine and its territories in the Caucasus. Ukraine had actually already signed its own separate treaty with the Germans. Yet though Ukraine had its independence recognised as a result of the treaty, in reality it was to become a German satellite. Both Germany and Austria preferred a revitalised Poland as a bulwark against Russia and an independent Ukraine would not sit comfortably with the Poles. With no army and not enough of its people committed to a truly independent Ukraine, it simply couldn’t survive on its own. It needed time to develop a national identity.
But, of course, Germany was to lose the war in the west and as soon as the Germans called for an armistice, local Bolsheviks in the republics lost in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Ukraine included, moved to take back control. But on Lenin’s instruction, the republics were not incorporated back into the RSFSR, instead Moscow made bilateral agreements with each of them. Lenin was, again, playing his clever “smoke and mirrors” game. Whilst showing sensitivity to the nationalities, he would nevertheless make sure they were governed by their local communist parties who would be subordinate to Moscow. So, real power would remain at the centre.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1918, civil war broke out in Russia and, in 1919, the White’s Volunteer Army moved into Ukraine. But Ukrainian nationalists and the peasants hated the Whites as much as the Bolsheviks. And there was also a separate Ukraine peasant army led by Nestor Makhno. Consequently, the Whites not only fought the Bolsheviks but Ukrainian nationalists and Makhno’s army, and the Bolsheviks likewise. So that when the Red Army was able to concentrate its forces on the White army they retook Kyiv in mid-December and re-established Ukraine as a Soviet republic. Crimea, which had declared itself an independent republic in 1917, would be where the Whites made their last stand but with the Red Army victorious, they fled the peninsula by boat in November, 1920. The formidable Makhno had tried to impose control in southern Ukraine, but with the civil war over, his movement was crushed.
But, for Ukraine (and Bielorussia) things had already become even more complicated. The Poles (Poland had been “recreated” in the Versailles settlement) had moved into Ukraine in a determined push to regain land that had been lost in the partitions of Poland in the late eighteen century that I had described in the last episode. Now, with Russia weakened by revolution and civil war, Poland was determined to assert itself and regain its lost territories. So, in the summer of 1919, the Poles advanced into Bielorussia and Ukraine, and a combined force of Poles and Ukrainian nationalists took hold of Kyiv in early May, 1920. The plan was to secure Ukrainian independence under Polish protection, but ceding western Ukraine to Poland. And when the war finally ended, Poland got much of what it wanted. The Treaty of Riga, signed in March, 1921, secured eastern Ukraine for Russia, a shrunken Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but gave Poland substantial gains in western Ukraine and Bielorussia (Belarus). Russia would have to wait for WW2 to get this land back. But the whole affair had given another boost to Ukrainian national consciousness and in Galicia, Polish-Ukraine, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, an extremist group bent on establishing a state along ethnic lines, was formed
After the civil war Lenin, as he had after Germany’s defeat in WW1, insisted that the “independent” Ukrainian Soviet Republic should be re-established. And he also insisted that non-Bolshevik socialists be included in the governing party – another major compromise on his part. They may not be Bolsheviks but they were socialists and they were mostly Ukrainians; and, looking ahead, they would add to the numbers of administrators helping the Ukrainian government to establish itself. Lenin was to say, ‘Let us, the Great Russians, display caution, patience, etc., and gradually we’ll get back into our hands all these Ukrainians, …’[1] In other words, the bilateral treaty and Ukrainian autonomy, would continue the pretence of Ukrainian independence from Moscow and the Russian Communist Party. “Smoke and mirrors”: Lenin was a committed ideologue but he was also a pragmatic, and devious, politician.
Lenin was determined that Russian nationalism wouldn’t again set the Ukraine population (and those of other nationalities) against them as it had in the civil war. He argued that rather than subjecting these peoples to what amounted to another dose of imperialism which would only feed nationalism, there was a need to recognise what were justifiable historical grievances of non-Russians against Russians, and this could only be done by recognising their status as Soviet republics. By March, 1921, as well as Ukraine, Bielorussia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia had also become Soviet republics, each with their own bilateral agreement with the RSFSR with smaller states, such as Crimea, recognised as ‘autonomous republics’ within the RSFR. This would not only give the Soviet republics cultural freedoms but the right to secede from the union if they so wished. After all, Communism was destined to unite all the workers of the world, so what did it matter?
And as he did in the other republics, Lenin called for the ‘free development of the Ukrainian language and culture’ and in the 1920s, they indeed enjoyed cultural autonomy. More Ukrainian children learnt their native language in the 1920s than had done so in the whole of the nineteenth century and the Ukrainian language was used in all institutions. Not only did it penetrate Ukrainian schools but it penetrated into offices, newspapers and journals, even party congresses and Bolshevik propaganda. And language, as I mentioned in the last episode, is so important to developing a national culture. But there was another profound change too: the rapid growth of Ukrainians living in Ukraine’s towns which, before the Bolshevik Revolution, had been dominated by Russians. As eastern Ukraine’s industries were developed, the peasants were attracted into the towns by the higher wages on offer. So that, between 1923 and 1927, the proportion of Kyiv’s population that was Ukrainian increased from 27% to 42%, and would carry on increasing until by 1941 they constituted an overwhelming majority.
Stalin hadn’t wanted any of this. He argued against in 1920, when the civil war started to go the way of the Bolsheviks, and again, in 1922 when a new constitution was being written. He felt all the republics should be brought under tight central control and lose even the appearance of independence. He wanted them all to become autonomous republics within the Soviet Union, not federated to it as seemingly equal partners. Stalin was concerned that nationalism was on the rise and he felt the Soviet republics needed to be made aware that they were subordinate to Moscow and the Party, but Lenin felt it was better to give them the appearance of independence. Stalin would eventually have his way, but whilst Lenin was alive, he would defer to him. But there was tension between the two men.
This brings us to the 1923 constitution (actually ratified on December 31st, 1922), written with Lenin seriously incapacitated by his strokes. It created the Bielorussian Republic, the Ukrainian Republic and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Republic and along with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (and all its ‘autonomous republics), they formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. So, Russia itself joined a federation of states (and note that “Russia” does not appear in the new state’s formal name). This would become incredibly important in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up, the republics grabbing their chance for independence, and the Russian Federation was formed.
In theory no republic in the newly formed USSR was regarded as supreme (though in reality, power was centralised in Moscow – more “smoke and mirrors”) and a Council of Nationalities was established that gave equal representation to each of the republics including the autonomous republics. Diplomatic and military matters, the economy, justice, labour, education and public health were all firmly controlled from Moscow. Such independence, such autonomy, as there was, was restricted to cultural matters, including language.
So, the upheavals of 1917, not one revolution, but two, had led to a stronger sense of nationalism amongst Ukrainians (and other nationalities), and a recognition of such from Lenin. Though any semblance of real autonomy in either the RSFSR or the USSR was a mirage, and, of course, Ukraine had been divided between Russia and Poland. But Lenin died at the beginning of 1924. And the man he made the Commissar for Nationalities and who vehemently disagreed with him over the nationalist issue, Stalin, would become leader of the Soviet Union.
7. Life Under Stalin
Stalin is famous for his purges, the use of terror, his five year-plans and enforced collectivisation, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. And whilst Stalin most probably didn’t say, ‘The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.’, the quote nevertheless best sums up his approach to human life. The number of deaths he was directly and indirectly responsible for, the human pain, is enough to make us stop and draw breath. And throug most of his time in power, some thirty years, the fate of Ukraine lay in his hands.
So, to Ukraine. As the 1920s progressed, so too did Ukrainian cultural autonomy. As we saw in the last episode, the Ukrainian language was used in all government offices as well as the law courts, and it was taught in all primary schools; and, in the schools, Ukrainian history and literature was taught. Ukrainian historic and ethnographic societies also flourished. The large Russian and Jewish minorities, particularly in the cities, resented having to conduct official business in Ukrainian, and have their children learn Ukrainian at school. But the process only gathered momentum as the industrialisation of Stalin’s First Year Plan brought more and more peasants into the cities. This had been official policy, directed by Lenin, the aim was to allow, even encourage, national cultures and develop local Party members to implement the rule of the Party and ultimately the principles of the Revolution. Stalin continued the policy, but it made him very uneasy.
Again, as we noted in the last episode, Stalin felt the Soviet republics should be brought under tight central control and lose even the appearance of independence. And in the 1930s, Stalin moved to bring an end to local nationalism or cultural nationalism. It wasn’t that he wanted to instigate a policy of Russification, but he did want to draw the different nationalities into a closer union with the Soviet state and with the Party.
He began with language. The compulsory use of local languages in government offices was stopped. Henceforth, Russian was to be used. In all primary schools and secondary schools, Russian as a second language became a compulsory subject. This led to an increase in the number of schools that taught Russian as a native language. Though this was partly a result of increasing numbers of Russians being moved to the republics, both Soviet and autonomous republics, but it was also a result of increasing numbers of local elites recognising the importance of Russian if their children were to have the best chance of a bright future. As a result, Russian also became the language most used in higher education too.
However, as I said, Stalin is most famous for his purges and use of terror and his five-year plans and enforced collectivisation of farming. The Great Terror that Stalin instigated, and which lasted from 1936 until 1939, hit every part of society, the state and even the Party. In Ukraine, Stalin moved to eradicate Ukraine’s leadership and ensure Moscow’s control. A Politburo commission headed by Khrushchev, along with an NKVD force (the secret police) was sent and during 1938 the leaders of the Party and virtually every institution of any note were executed. The entire government was arrested, and those that replaced them too. Out of the 200 members of the Central Committee of the Ukraine Republic, only three survived. The same thing was happening elsewhere in Russia during the Great Terror but Ukraine, of all the republics, was going to be hit hard, and the result was that the Communist Party in Ukraine was destroyed and rebuilt by Khruschev. One of those who benefited was a young Brezhnev.
But if the purges and terror were on a scale that leaves Hitler way, way, way in the shade, the human cost of Stalin’s forced collectivisation of farming and the famine that followed in the early 1930s, was on a scale hard to imagine. Russians were used to famines and there had been famine during the time of Lenin – the famine of 1921-2 – which affected southern Ukraine as well as other regions which, though it was initially caused by a year of drought and heavy frosts that meant poor crop yields, was made so much worse by the cumulative effects of forced requisitioning of grain during and after the civil war.
But the famine caused by Stalin’s enforced collectivisation of peasant smallholdings was on a different scale. The social upheaval experienced by the peasantry was pitiful and they were left bewildered, unable to comprehend what was going on, as much as they were left angry. Rather than surrender the results of their hard work to the state, the peasants burned their crops, ate their seed stock leaving nothing left to plant, and slaughtered their livestock, so that there wasn’t a source of meat or milk either. In many areas they simply stopped growing crops, either as a last act of defiance or else because despair had turned to a total inability to adapt to an alien system enforced on them.
In Ukraine, Stalin was convinced that the peasants anti-Soviet attitude was at the root of the problem and he was determined that the quota demanded of the republic would be met. Consequently, he took personal control of what he regarded as a military operation and requisitioning teams brutally carried out his orders. Stalin was also convinced that the peasants were hoarding grain, and was determined to seize it.
In a speech made to Party members in the summer of 1930, Stalin said:
‘The peasant is adopting a new tactic. He refuses to reap the harvest. He wants the bread grain to die in order to choke the Soviet Government with the bony hand of famine. But the enemy miscalculates. We will show him what famine is. Your task is to stop the kulak sabotage of the harvest; you must bring it in to the last grain… The peasants are not working. They are counting on previously harvested grain they have hidden in pits. We must force them to open their pits.’
Of course, famine ensued, but this was a famine created entirely by the state. And Ukraine was the worst affected republic in the Soviet Union: the mortality rate in 1933 was 50% higher than the previous year. Indeed, Ukrainians to this day, see the famine that ensued as a deliberate policy, Stalin’s ‘Final Solution’, targeting nothing less than the extermination of Ukrainians. They call it, ‘the Holodomor, meaning death by starvation. And they have a point.
In 1932 Ukraine’s borders were sealed by the Red Army and travel was banned as requisition squads moved from village to village collecting grain. The peasants either fulfilled the state’s requirements or faced deportation. It was strictly forbidden to organise relief. And there were stores of grain under armed guard in Ukraine, one piled in the open near a Kyiv railway station, rotted to waste in the sun. The quotas of grain collected were cut as evidence of starvation mounted, but it was never anywhere near enough. And throughout, Party officials who had usually taken over the homes of the former kulaks, the slightly wealthier peasants who were the first to be targeted by the requisition squads, had specially delivered rations. But they lived like an occupying force in a hostile country.
As the death toll mounted, corpses were piled at the side of roads in both village and town, only in the larger cities were the dead collected each morning before being buried in pits. And any reports of a famine were banned, even talking about it could lead to an arrest. But there are, nevertheless, testimonies. Milon Dolot, a professor of Slavic languages and a writer, in his memoirs recalled when, as a boy in his home village, the leader of a requisitioning squad was asked why the village was being searched when there was no food to be had, his reply was that the simple fact that the villagers were alive proved there was food to be found. He also remembered how the fields ‘looked like a battlefield after a great war’, there were so many bodies. ‘People died’, he added, ‘where they collapsed in their endless search for food.’ Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist who visited the region, described it as ‘one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe that it happened.’[1] It is estimated that four million people died of the famine in Ukraine.
Was it a deliberate attempt to exterminate Ukrainians? Ridding the Soviet Union of the scourge of Ukrainian nationalism was linked with collectivisation: Stalin did see the kulak as the bearer of nationalism, just as he saw the nationalists as responsible for feeding them those ideas. Indeed, Stalin declared the peasant ‘the very essence of the nationality problem.’ And in 1929, around 5,000 members of an alleged underground movement, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, were arrested and forty-five prominent scholars were victims of a show trial, charged and convicted with conspiring to seize power (as well as working to make the Ukrainian language as distinct from Russian as was possible). And in 1931, prominent Ukrainians who had returned from exile in the mid-1920s were also arrested, charged with forming a Ukrainian National Centre. So, there was a crackdown on Ukarianian nationalism going on at the same time as the famine. But it is still extremely doubtful: 25% of the population were not Ukrainians and besides, Stalin needed Ukrainians as well as Russians working in the factories and mines. And the famine was exceptionally severe in other regions. But he did want to teach the Ukrainians a lesson.
The famine was especially harsh in Crimea too, and tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars perished. And the Crimean Tatars were already suffering discrimination. In 1928–9, somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 Crimean Tatars were arrested and deported to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. Not even Communist party members were spared. In 1928, 3,500 party members were purged as bourgeois nationalists. Some were executed, many more were imprisoned in Soviet concentration camps. Between 1917 and 1933 approximately 150,000 Tatars—half of their population—had been killed, imprisoned, deported to other parts of the Soviet Union or forced to emigrate. And in 1936 a campaign to Russify the remaining Tatars was begun.
Indeed, the human suffering resulting from Stalin’s policies was on a scale hard to imagine.
But I’m now going to turn to WW2 and its impact on Ukraine and Crimea. The Nazi-Soviet Pact, the treaty between Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union to divide Poland and the Balkan states between themselves, enabled the Soviet Union to take back control of western Ukraine (and Bielorussia) and, with Khrushchev in charge, immediately set about deporting all ‘criminal, socially alien and anti-Soviet elements’; what the rest of Ukraine had been experiencing since Stalin gained power (though this time it included anyone with a German ancestry as well as the usual suspects).
And, of course, the pact didn’t hold and in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Russia across the length of its borders and in the south, targeted Ukraine’s industries but even more so, its grain. WW2 saw fierce and prolonged fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. Ukraine, with its wheat, mines and industry, and its geographical position – its access to the Black Sea and the oil fields in the Caucasus, notably Baku – was of tremendous strategic significance in WW2, and consequently was a key battle zone. And as the Germans pushed the Russians back, Ukrainians welcomed the Germans as liberators, whilst peasants foresaw the end of collectivisation. The Wehrmacht soldiers were offered bread and salt, Ukrainians traditional sign of welcome. Some even collaborated with the German administration, some even forming anti-Soviet guerrilla units, searching out and killing Red Army stragglers and partisans. This when Stalin had called for a Partisans War to defend Mother Russia.
But once the reality of German occupation hit home (and it didn’t take long), resistance was more common than collaboration. The peasants didn’t get control back of their farms, the Germans merely transferred the collective farms and the state-run industries to their own control. But the Germans also needed workers for their farms and factories back in Germany and took them from all the territories they occupied. In Ukraine it was not unusual for men and women, even children in the final stages of the occupation, to be unceremoniously deported to Germany as slave labour: taken from market places, churches, even out of their homes. Whilst whole villages were burned to the ground for failure to give up enough workers. The Germans also forcibly moved Ukrainians from their homes, whole villagers, and moved in ethnic Germans as colonists.
Understandably, there were Ukrainians who thought it was time to fight stand up for Ukraine and some 300,000 nationalist guerrillas fought against the German occupiers, but also the partisans and the Red Army when it started to push the Germans back out of Ukraine. The Soviet Union responded by killing and arresting known nationalists and deporting their families. Indeed, the violence between partisans and nationalists didn’t finally subside until the early 1950s. After the war, the Russians also imprisoned or deported anyone who had collaborated with the Germans and, too, those who had been forcibly shipped to Germany to work for them.
Like Ukraine, Crimea had been occupied by the Germans and undoubtedly there had been some collaboration But also Crimean Tatars were accused of deserting en masse from the Red Army. Soviet troops in Crimea had surrendered in July 1942 but only after a deadly eight-month-long siege of Sevastopol. This mattered not, Moscow was set on removing the Crimean Tatars once and for all. In 1944, the entire population was forcibly deported, mostly to modern-day Uzbekistan but some to Siberia. More than 200,000 people, losing their homes and often their lives, driven onto cattle trucks for a journey that could take several weeks with little food and water, those that died on the way were simply thrown off the trains. Almost half died during the deportation or within the first couple of years due to the harsh conditions: a lack of food and shelter as well as diseases. As is always the case, the elderly and young children were particularly vulnerable. The result of years of Russian attacks on the Crimean Tarters was such that, whereas in 1783 when Russia incorporated Crimea into its empire, Russians barely accounted for 2% of Crimea’s population, by the demise of the Soviet Union that figure was just short of 75%. Yet just over 50% of Crimea’s population still voted in favour of Ukraine’s referendum on independence in 1991.
The post-war fate of Ukraine and Crimea was decided by the victorious Allies and at the Potsdam conference, the last of the three conferences of Allied leaders that decided the post-war world, the Polish borders were pushed back westwards which meant Soviet Ukraine was enlarged. Crimea was downgraded from an autonomous republic to an oblast (region) of the Soviet Union.
So, what is the legacy of Stalinism for Ukraine? It showed that for as long as they were a part of the Soviet Union, they would be a subjected people. Not in control of their own destiny. Lenin’s “smoke and mirrors”, his efforts to give cultural autonomy and the impression of some political autonomy, had been well and truly cast aside by Stalin, and brutally so. Stalin had brought his terror and his purges to Ukraine; he had brought famine on Ukraine and he brought war to Ukraine (though we have to accept that Hitler had something to do with that too). And the degree of suffering brought upon Ukraine had to have left in its people a desire to be in control of their own destiny. However, they would have to wait almost another forty years after Stalin’s death before they would have a chance to seize their own destiny
The collapse of the Soviet Union
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was something that was remarkable in a number of ways: its apparent suddenness, its unexpectedness, and, of course, its game-changing, epoch-changing nature. ‘The end of history’, as the political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, declared. We thought the world would never be the same again, expect today it seems little has changed and we are back in a new Cold War between Russia and the West.
But you can see why we were all so, what’s the right word? – shocked? stunned? amazed? excited?, when you look back at the few years between 1989 and 1991. The last six months of 1989 saw six communist states in the Soviet bloc throw off the shackles of both communism and the Soviet Union. Throughout 1990 and into 1991, the Soviet Union itself was in crisis, tottering on the edge of collapse, and at the end of 1991, it did indeed collapse and ceased to exist. Of course, such events would have a huge impact on Ukraine and the other states that made up the “union”.
So, what happened? Gorbachev took over the leadership of the Communist Party, and so the Soviet Union, in 1985 and quickly came to realise that the economy had to be drastically restructured if it was to provide the people with a standard of living approaching that experienced in the West. This was his policy of perestroika (restructuring), and in 1987 he introduced reforms that led to a mixed economy: part socialist, part free market. Faced with opposition from within the Party (as well as amongst the people), he then moved to democratise the political system (the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 had helped convince him of the need to do so, indeed he referred to it as ‘a turning point’, commenting that democratisation was the ‘principle guarantee of [the] irreversibility of perestroika’, and he also introduced the second plank to his reforms: glasnost or “openness”, the freedom to express an opinion and to criticise, in the belief that opening up the political debate surrounding his reforms, including freeing up the media, would weaken the opposition he faced from within the ranks of the Party. Whereas the Party had a self-interest in maintaining the status quo, he felt the people, notably the intellectuals and what passed as a middle class, would support him thus enabling him to by-pass the opposition he faced in the Party. So, censorship was relaxed and the jamming of foreign radio stations was stopped. The release from seven years of house arrest of the dissident physicist, Andrei Sakharov, at the end of 1986 was followed by the mass release of political prisoners the following year; all in the spirit of glasnost. Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin in 1956 in a secret speech, Gorbachev now publicly criticised him.
Political reforms were announced at the Party conference in 1988: a new Congress of People’s Deputies. And though the elections in 1989 were not multi-party elections and those nominated for election by the Party were carefully controlled, there was nevertheless an opportunity to elect some independent candidates and for the first time, voters used what had always been their right, to cross out names on the ballot paper to demonstrate their unacceptability. And though the Party still dominated the new Congress, there was genuine debate and, what is more, proceedings were televised. Then, in 1990 the leading role of the Communist Party was removed from the constitution.
But the move to introduce a mixed economy – part socialist but part capitalist – only led to worsening problems as the economy struggled to make the change. Government revenue dropped and its budget deficit leapt alarmingly (perhaps as much as four-fold). Inflation became a problem for the first time since WW2 and some basic goods had to be rationed for the first time since Stalin. Gorbachev had intended to reform the system in order to improve it, only to find that the system needed replacing. Whilst tentative moves toward democracy, along with glasnost, only fuelled nationalism in the republics. Gorbachev was fast-losing control of his reforms and he was losing political control. It was the classic case of limited reforms only leading to demands from the people for more reforms. And these demands included a nationalist tsunami.
It was at first most visible in the eastern bloc countries –in Poland where Solidarity won almost every contested seat in free elections and would form the first non-Communist government in the eastern bloc. In Hungary where the Communist Party itself instigated the moves that led to the scheduling of free multi-party elections. In East Germany where tens of thousands of East Germans made their way to Hungary “on holiday” and refused to go home, they would also do the same Czechoslovakia. And in Czechoslovakia so sudden was the resignation of the Communist government that its replacement had to be hastily put in place, making policy on the hoof. In Bulgaria where the now familiar sequence of events unfolded: the Communist Party relinquishing power, alternative parties announcing themselves as former political prisoners were released and free elections announced. And finally, in Romania, the only country where the communist regime was overthrown violently. But it had been in Berlin where the breakaway from Soviet control was for ever symbolised in everyone’s minds – by Berliners clambering onto the Berlin Wall and hacking pieces out of it. It was a rejection of Soviet-style socialism, but it was also a rejection of Russian control, Russian imperialism. And all the time, Gorbachev made clear he would not intervene to prop up unpopular regimes.
But in a Union of more than a hundred different ethnic groups, glasnost would have an impact on the nationalities issue that, as we have seen, Lenin and Stalin had struggled to deal with. In 1989, Gorbachev had allowed the Crimean Tatars to finally return home but all those ethnic groups had outstanding grievances. Many may have dated way back into Tsarist times, but they still mattered and there were also plenty of grievances against the Soviet state. Two important Soviet examples were the demand from Georgians to be told the truth behind the Russian invasion of 1921 and the demand from the Balkan states to be told the truth behind the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.
So, as the eastern bloc countries were freeing themselves from Russian control in 1989, also in 1989, the Ukrainian Popular Front held its first Congress, making the first moves towards separation. Whilst in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia around a million people held hands in a human chain, stretching some 650 kilometres from Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, through Riga, Latvia’s capital and onto Tallin, Estonia’s capital, in a protest against the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 as well as clearly asserting their right to renewed independence. The Baltic states had been a part of the Tsarist empire but had briefly been independent, seizing the opportunities WW1 presented as first Russia collapsed and then Germany was defeated, only to be reabsorbed into the Soviet Union as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact that preceded WW2.
Gorbachev still hoped his economic reforms could save the socialist economy and his political reforms would save socialism as a political system, and that, by handing the nationalities greater autonomy, he would also save the Soviet Union. Thus, in March, 1990, Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which secured the Communist Party’s political monopoly, was annulled.
But the demands for independence didn’t go away. In March 1990 the Baltic republics of Lithuania and Estonia led the way, declaring their independence, and in May, Latvia declared its intention to do so. But the next nationalist declaration came from Russia when, in June, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic (remember Russia technically became part of a federation of Soviet republics under Lenin’s watch), declared its ‘sovereignty’, its own right to autonomy from the Soviet Union. Of course, other republics quickly asserted their own autonomy: Ukraine in July.
Meanwhile, though strictly not part of our specific story, its nevertheless interesting to note that in October East and West Germany formally unified, Gorbachev having already accepted that it, in doing so, it would apply for NATO membership. Whilst, very much relevant to our story, in July, 1991 the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union’s counter to NATO, was formally wound up. And NATO invited the members of the defunct pact (except for Albania) but plus Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and, too, the Soviet Union itself, to a meeting to discuss a future partnership.
There was a small show of force by the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1991 in Vilnius and Riga the respective capitals of Lithuania and Latvia but referenda for independence were still allowed to be held in all three Baltic republics in February and March, and in huge turn outs, 90% of Lithuanians, 74% of Latvians and 78% of Estonians voted for independence. It is true that a referendum was also held across the Soviet Union produced a majority of 76% in favour of maintaining the Union, but the Baltic republics as well as Georgia, Armenia and Moldova refused to take part, whilst western Ukraine added an additional question to the referendum which showed 88% in favour of Ukrainian independence. What is more, Russian nationalism continued to assert itself, concerned about the cost to the Russian economy in subsidising the other republics.
This was the situation when, in June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian republic in a landslide victory, further weakening Gorbachev’s attempts to hold the Soviet Union together. For Yeltsin positioned himself as a Russian nationalist. He had been elected to the Russian Federation in March, 1990 and in June he was made Chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet (Russia’s parliament). He immediately ensured that Russian laws would hold precedence over Soviet laws and, what is more, withheld two-thirds of the Soviet Union’s budget for Russia. Yeltsin also publicly supported nationalism in the Baltic republics. And in July, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR voted in favour of a new decentralised Union with the republics.
But what left Gorbachev mortally weakened was the attempted coup carried out by hard-line Party members, as well as some high-ranking officers from the KGB and the military, in August whilst Gorbachev was on holiday in Crimea. Gorbachev was placed under house arrest in Crimea, the plotters announced a state of emergency and tanks were positioned on Moscow’s streets, sealing off the Russian parliament. But the attempted coup quickly collapsed and though Gorbachev survived it, political power passed to Yeltsin. Yeltsin was the elected president of Russia, its popular leader, whilst in fact, Gorbachev headed nothing. He resigned as Secretary-General of the Communist Party (Yeltsin had already suspended the Party’s license to function in Russia) and though he may have still been President of the Soviet Union, it was hardly functioning anymore.
Whilst Gorbachev had been held under house arrest, Estonia and Latvia declared their independence; and they were quickly followed by Ukraine, Bielorussia, now calling itself Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Tajikistan and Armenia.
Gorbachev had proposed a Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics to replace the Soviet Union which would involve a heavy dose of autonomy but with economic union (which would mean Gorbachev’s brand of socialism), a common defence and a single military command. Ukraine, however, was never interested in the idea and without Ukraine’s support, it was a non-starter. On December 1st 1991, a referendum in Ukraine voted for independence. Nationalists wanted independence, pure and simple, others wanted to be free of Soviet control in order to implement economic and other reforms as soon as possible, others still, wanted more than anything else to be free of Gorbachev.
On December 8th, the presidents of Russia (and Yeltsin was now as much anti-communist as he was Russian nationalist), Ukraine and Bielorussia, the three Slavic states, met at Minsk and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. They replaced it with a Commonwealth of Independent States on much the same lines as Gorbachev had proposed, but of course without Gorbachev and his brand of socialism. They invited the other former Soviet republics to join. Eight of them did so: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all declined. Yeltsin had taken care to secure the military’s support, no doubt helped by a 90% pay rise. On December 25th, 1991 Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union and the red flag, with its hammer and sickle representing the worker and the peasant, was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time, though, formally, the Soviet Union didn’t cease to exist until midnight December 31st.
At the end of 1994, Ukraine and Russia, along with America and the UK, signed the Budapest Memorandum, which committed the signatories to respect Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders (which included Crimea), while Ukraine pledged to hand over its considerable stockpile of Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia for decommissioning. The Soviet Union’s Black Sea Fleet was divided proportionally between Ukraine and Russia and Russia secured an extended lease on the port facilities at Sevastopol. This was confirmed in 1997 in the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership.
So, we see that with the demise of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had at last asserted itself as an independent nation, and the Russian Federation had recognised it as such. It had taken a long time but it Ukraine, first needed a literate and educated peasantry for a national consciousness to develop. This only began with the intelligentsia in the middle of the nineteenth century, and with the peasantry in the Soviet era. It then needed an opportunity to break away from Russia which finally came with the break-up of the Soviet Union. And it seized its chance.
Crimea
With the formal end of the Soviet Union and the advent of the Commonwealth of Independent States, old Russia became known as the Russian Federation. And it was still the largest country in the world covering eleven time zones. And with the CIS, continued economic and military cooperation with the former republics seemed to be assured. So, though it was in a bad way, no longer the awesome power it had been since WW2, Russia had the potential to recover and retake its place amongst the major players, something I feel was a major motivating force for Putin.
Two things for us to note, however, given that it has come to war in Ukraine, is that Yeltsin immediately moved to impose a Soviet Union-style dictatorship. Indeed, his battle for power with the Russian parliament, the Duma, almost led to civil war. As it was, tanks appeared again on the streets of Moscow before Yeltsin won and the new constitution he largely wrote, left him, as president, with enormous power, including the right to issue decrees, to dismiss the parliament and call for new elections. So, we can see that autocracy was still the style of government in the Russian Federation for all the air of a new beginning. The other thing to note, given the sanctions imposed on Putin’s supporters, is that it was in this early stage, with Yeltsin president, that the process of privatisation led to the emergence of the infamous “oligarchs,” individuals who, because of their political connections, came to control huge portions of the Russian economy.
But something else for us to note is that the CIS was largely a failure as far as Russia was concerned. The differences, historical, ideological and political, were too great for cooperation to last long. Ukraine and Moldova never cooperated on military matters (except for Ukraine returning Russia’s nuclear arsenal for decommissioning) and most of the republics increasingly distanced themselves the more Russia tried to dominate, the Western states – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine – moving themselves ever closer to the European Union instead. Hence the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) which was created in 2014 by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
As for the nationalist issue, that had by no means been settled, not even within the Russian Federation. Chechnya, which as we have noted in an earlier episode had declared independence in 1991 only to be thwarted, gave Yeltsin most trouble but it wasn’t the only region. As for its relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States, though the Russian Federation trod wearily, it nevertheless sought to exercise an overbearing influence on “the near-abroad”, as Russia referred to its newly independent neighbours in an effort to keep them reliant on the Russian Federation.
It put economic pressure on Ukraine. It gave aid to separatists in Moldova, interfered in the Tajikistan civil war, threatened to support the separatists in Georgia (another issue we have already noted in an earlier episode) and as a result, Georgia left the CIS in 2009. At one point it also looked as if Belarus might re-merge with Russia but nothing came of it.
We have seen how Putin’s popularity was made by the manner in which he had dealt firmly with the Chechen rebels and in 2004 he was re-elected in a landslide victory and when the constitution didn’t allow him to run for the presidency a third time, he tied himself to the United Russia Party and stood as a delegate for the Russia parliament. His successor as president, was his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who was duly anointed by Putin as the next president. But there was little doubt about who was really in charge. And, of course, Putin would return as president in 2012, swapping roles again with Medvedev. In 2020, Putin would set about changing the constitution so that he could, in effect, be president for life, but long before that, he also set about dealing with opposition. Changes to the law allowed the prosecution of any unlawful gatherings (and who would licence gatherings in Putin’s Russia?). Also, anyone, or any organisation, receiving funding from outside Russia, had to register themselves as ‘foreign agents’.
A couple of the more famous cases you might remember would be the arrest, trial and imprisonment of three members of the punk band, Pussy Riot in 2012. And the case of the anti-corruption blogger, Aleksey Navalny. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison – suspended – for embezzlement in 2013. He stood for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and did better than expected in the vote, and then in 2014 he received another suspended sentence for embezzlement. He tried to stand for the presidential elections in 2018 but was barred from doing so due to his convictions. In 2018, Navalny initiated ‘Smart Voting’ – tactical voting to maximise the votes of those opposing Putin’s United Russia. In 2020, he was hospitalised after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent (also used by Russian agents operating in the UK). He was in a very serious condition and was medically evacuated to Berlin. He accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and when he returned to Russia, he was immediately arrested on accusations of violating the conditions of his suspended sentences. Consequently, in 2021, he was given a prison sentence of two and half years’ and in 2022, he received an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial. He is currently in a high-security prison.
So, what about Crimea? In 1954, to mark the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Agreement and to strengthen the ‘brotherly ties between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples,’ Nikita Khrushchev made Crimea a part of the Ukraine. It made sense economically as Crimea was more closely tied to Kyiv than it was to Moscow. But in effect, Khrushchev was still trying to keep Ukraine tied to the Soviet Union lest the Russians cease to constitute a majority. As we have noted on more than one occasion, without Ukraine Russians would become a minority in the Soviet Union. But it remained a balancing act, appeasement of nationalist feelings without letting those feelings get up a head of steam. It would be the same for Brezhnev and, indeed, as we have seen, right to the very end of the Soviet Union.
In 1991 Crimea was actually once more made an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union but, as we have noted a few times in this series on Ukraine, when Ukraine held a referendum on independence in December 1991, a majority of Crimean voters, 54%, favoured independence from Russia as part of Ukraine. It took some negotiation but Crimea agreed to remain a part of Ukraine but with a significant degree of autonomy which included its own constitution, its own legislation and, for a short time at least (until 1994), its own president. Tatars returned to their homeland, it began before the Soviet Union fell apart, but hastened after 1991 so that their population in Crimea rose from a low of some 38,000 to around 300,000.
Putin’s annexation of Crimea can be seen as a response to Kosovo, which, with Western support, had seceded unilaterally from Russia’s ally, Serbia in 2008. And for the Maidan, or Euromaidan, uprising of 2013-14 in which Ukrainians, for the second time, ousted their pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych had extended Russia’s lease on the port at Sevastopol until 2042 and he had allowed Russia to place up to 25,000 troops at the port and operate two air bases in Crimea. But it was when Yanukovych suspended plans to sign an association agreement with the European Union and moved to join the Eurasian Economic Union instead, that massive protests forced him to flee to Russia in February 2014. Ukraine’s parliament elected an acting prime minister and acting president, who ‘promptly declared their goals of signing the association agreement and bringing the country closer to Europe.’ Putin regarded the Maidan uprising as nothing less than a Western-backed “fascist coup” that endangered ethnic Russians in Crimea, and Putin claims that within hours of Yanukovych fleeing Kyiv, he had made the decision to ‘bring Crimea back to Russia,’ protecting ethnic Russians from ‘far-right extremists’ who had overthrown Yanukovych.
Just days after Yanukovych fled Kyiv, uniformed troops but without any insignia (later identified as Russian troops), took control of key sites in Crimea including the Crimean parliament building. Pro-Russian legislators, meeting in a closed session of the parliament, then elected Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian Unity Party’s leader, as prime minister, even though the party had received less than 5% of the vote in the 2010 regional election. They then called on Russia to send troops to Crimea which, of course, was duly done. In their next move, the Crimean parliament voted unanimously to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
A referendum was held in March, 2014, in which Moscow claims 97% of Crimeans voted to become part of Russia. However, international observers were not allowed to monitor the vote, foreign journalists were not allowed either. It was largely boycotted by the Crimean Tatars, indeed it is thought that the turnout might have been as low as 30% but this is difficult to verify. But the circumstances in which the referendum was held, the intimidation, for example there were Russian soldiers stationed at the polling stations, and the fact that it was conducted by the Russians themselves all lead to the same conclusion: the vote was hardly valid. No matter, two days later Crimea was incorporated into the Russian Federation.
The West condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and it imposed sanctions but these had countless loopholes, and the Russian economy continued to grow. Putin’s popularity soared and the West’s condemnation only served to fan the flames of Russian nationalism. The success of Crimea also emboldened Russia. It didn’t take long before fighting broke out in the Donbas region with Russian security forces funding, arming and leading a “separatist” movement.
Since 2014, at least 700,000 Russians have moved to the peninsula (out of a population of 2.4 million, whilst 100,000 Crimeans, harassed with detentions, arrests, forced disappearances, and even torture, have left the peninsula. Russian citizenship has been forced on Crimeans, forcing them to choose between swearing allegiance to a power they consider hostile or risk being deprived of their rights, losing their jobs, the right to vote, or the right to practice their religion. An illustration of how Russia makes a territory Russian. A poll conducted in 2019 that showed a majority of Crimeans wanted Crimea to be a part of Russia, like the referendum, cannot be trusted, especially as Russia had criminalised opposition to its annexation.
A month after taking Crimea, Russian-backed and heavily armed paramilitary units took over government buildings in Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donets Basin or the Donbas in south-eastern Ukraine, declaring their independence. Though denying any Russian involvement, Putin nevertheless publicly referred to the region as “Novorossiya” (New Russia).
At least 14,000 people had been killed in clashes between Ukrainian armed forces before the 2022 invasion and you may remember that on July 17th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, carrying 298 people, was shot down flying over eastern Ukraine. And, of course, today, Luhansk and Donetsk, along with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, have been illegally annexed by Putin.
So, why?
It has been a much longer explanation than I had expected when I started out but I think it was important to go back to Soviet Russia, to Tsarist Russia, even to Kievan Rus. Whatever country you call home will have its own history, its own myths and its own controversies. When looking at Kievan Rus, I likened the history of Russia and Ukraine to that of Britain and in reaching this final episode, I’ve been thinking of that. In Northern Ireland the protestant community still commemorates with great passion the Battle of the Boyne which took place way back in 1690. Whilst the Catholic Irish community across Ireland, and indeed the world, will go much further back – to the fifth century – in celebrating St Patricks Day, which is first and foremost a religious celebration (did you know that until the 1970s, pubs were required by law to close in Ireland on the big day). And in Scotland, the Scots sing the Flower of Scotland which celebrates the victory of the Scots over the English in the Battle of Bannockburn way back in the early fourteenth century with tremendous passion – you would have to be made of stone not to be stirred when it is sung by a packed crowd at a Scottish rugby game at Murrayfield (google it if you’re not from the UK)! My point is that history matters!
But we began this series by considering Putin’s mindset, and that’s where I want to return to in order to wrap things up. I’ll begin, then, by making use of the article Putin wrote in July, 2021, titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians which set out his thinking on Ukraine, and which, significantly, was published in Russian, Ukrainian and English – an indication of his intended audience. There will be an element of repeating things already raised but I think there are important points that should be underlined.
Putin begins his article by setting out the undeniable historic links between Russia and Ukraine, between Moscow and Kyiv that we, ourselves, have explored. With references to ‘Ancient Rus’ and the common ties resulting from a shared Orthodox faith as well as linguistic links, he claims that ‘Russians and Ukrainians are one people – a single whole’, and referred to a ‘wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space.’ And that Ukraine’s leaders and the West were running an ‘anti-Russian project’, something they had done since the Poles and Austria-Hungary had tried to separate parts of Ukraine from Russia. However, interestingly, he also places great emphasis on the mistake Lenin had made when, and I use Putin’s words, ‘The right for the republics to freely secede from the Union was included in the text of the Declaration on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and, subsequently, in the 1924 USSR Constitution. By doing so, the authors planted in the foundation of our statehood the most dangerous time bomb, which exploded the moment the safety mechanism provided by the leading role of the CPSU [the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] was gone, the party itself collapsing from within.’ Whilst in his televised speech explaining his “special military operation” to the Russian people as the troops were pouring into Ukraine he said, ‘I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.’ Later adding that Ukraine could ‘with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’.’
Back to the “Unity” article, Putin delves into the history of Russia and Ukraine at some length, not as much as we have actually, but still, he covers the same ground, however it is his comments on the state of things since the collapse of the Soviet Union that I want to focus on. And I’ll begin at the point of collapse. This is what Putin has to say with regard to state borders: ‘You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union.’
Now this is critically important to Putin’s sense of justice and we have to look at it in some detail. As we know from my episode on the Bolshevik Revolution, an awful lot went on in the time between Tsar Nicholas’ abdication in February, 1917 and Lenin’s 1923 Constitution which formally came into place on December 31st, 1922. I’m not going to repeat what I said in that episode but a Provisional Government had replaced the Tsar when, at the beginning of March, 1917 a Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, was formed which would form its own government, declaring autonomy though not independence. The Bolsheviks repeatedly recognized national concerns: the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia called for a ‘voluntary and honourable union’ with the right of secession, and the Manifesto to the Ukrainian People held out the prospect of Ukraine taking its place in a federal system. Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People called for a ‘free union of nations as a federation of Soviet republics.’ The Ukrainian rada responded by declaring a Ukrainian People’s Republic which included all the disputed territory – Kharkiv, Kherson, Donbas – except for Crimea which, as we have seen was made part of Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954. So, Kharkiv, Kherson and Donbas were a recognized part of Ukraine before the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was declared in January, 1918, with Ukraine a federated republic. But there was also the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918 and the loss of Ukraine to the RSFSR. Only for Germany to seek an armistice itself in November at which point the republics were not incorporated back into the RSFSR, instead Moscow made bilateral agreements with each of them. But there was also civil war and there was war with Poland which ended with the Treaty of Riga signed in March, 1921, both of which directly affected Ukraine, but particularly the treaty as Poland which took western Ukraine. And it that period, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic included the Donetsk, Luhansk (which was then a part of the Donetsk region or oblast) Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhia regions. And this brings us to the 1923 constitution in which the Ukrainian Republic joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What is more, don’t forget that the USSR was formed with four recognised republics: the Bielorussian Republic, the Ukrainian Republic the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Republic and the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, thus four recognised borders for those republics.
But again, back to “Unity”, Putin goes on to say how the strength of the Ukrainian economy at the point of the Soviet Union’s break-up has been destroyed by successive Ukrainian governments ‘who waisted and frittered away the achievements of many generations’ (his words). He referred to how ‘high-tech industrial giants that were once the pride of Ukraine and the entire Union, are sinking.’ And, referring to the events of 2014 added, ‘Even after the events in Kiev of 2014 [the Maidan uprising], I charged the Russian government to elaborate options for preserving and maintaining our economic ties within relevant ministries and agencies. However, there was and is still no mutual will to do the same.’
Then he gets to the very nub of his grievance: ‘When the USSR collapsed, many people in Russia and Ukraine sincerely believed and assumed that our close cultural, spiritual and economic ties would certainly last, as would the commonality of our people, who had always had a sense of unity at their core. However, events – at first gradually, and then more rapidly – started to move in a different direction.In essence, Ukraine’s ruling circles decided to justify their country’s independence through the denial of its past… They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation. The common tragedy of collectivization and famine of the early 1930s was portrayed as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.’
And he points an accusing finger at the West too: ‘I recall that long ago’, he says, ‘well before 2014, the U.S. and EU countries systematically and consistently pushed Ukraine to curtail and limit economic cooperation with Russia. We, as the largest trade and economic partner of Ukraine, suggested discussing the emerging problems in the Ukraine-Russia-EU format. But every time we were told that Russia had nothing to do with it and that the issue concerned only the EU and Ukraine. De facto Western countries rejected Russia’s repeated calls for dialogue.
Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia.’ He goes on to argue that just as the Poles and the old Austro-Hungarian empire, and then the Nazis, had exploited Ukrainians so, too, today is America and the EU, turning Ukrainians against Russia with their ‘blatant Russophobia.’ And he accuses the Ukrainian government of doing the same: ‘All the things that united us and bring us together so far came under attack.’
His sense of bitterness is revealed when he goes on to say, ‘the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors, but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.’
As for his accusations of Nazism, he refers first to ‘the seizure of churches, the beating of priests and monks.’ Before also referring to ‘Marches and torchlit processions in honour of remaining war criminals from the SS units [that] take place under the protection of the official authorities.’ And he refers to the violent clashes following the Maidan uprising of 2013-14. Again, I use Putin’s words: ‘The anti-Russia project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians. The people of Crimea and residents of Sevastopol made their historic choice. And people in the southeast peacefully tried to defend their stance. Yet, all of them, including children, were labeled as separatists and terrorists. They were threatened with ethnic cleansing and the use of military force. And the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk took up arms to defend their home, their language and their lives. Were they left any other choice after the riots that swept through the cities of Ukraine, after the horror and tragedy of 2 May 2014 in Odessa where Ukrainian neo-Nazis burned people alive?’ And indeed 42 anti-Maidan (and so, pro-Russian) demonstrators died in a fire when they were attacked whilst holding out in the Trade Unions House in Odessa. He also accuses the Ukraine government of breaking the Minsk agreements that attempted to bring about an end to the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk but whilst a finger can be pointed at both sides, the separatists instigated the unrest and have been less ready to reach a settlement.
He moves towards a conclusion by damming both the leaders of Ukraine and the West, saying ‘we are facing the creation of a climate of fear in Ukrainian society, aggressive rhetoric, indulging neo-Nazis and militarising the country. Along with that, we are witnessing not just complete dependence but direct external control, including the supervision of the Ukrainian authorities, security services and armed forces by foreign advisers, military ”development“ of the territory of Ukraine and deployment of NATO infrastructure…The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain…. And in some ways the situation in Ukraine and around Donbas has even degenerated.
In the anti-Russia project, there is no place either for a sovereign Ukraine or for the political forces that are trying to defend its real independence. Those who talk about reconciliation in Ukrainian society, about dialogue, about finding a way out of the current impasse are labelled as “pro-Russian” agents.
Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished. [more oblique references to Nazism] Today, the ”right“ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea.
All the subterfuges associated with the anti-Russia project are clear to us. And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.’
Now, of course, there are other factors at play and in the course of our long journey looking at the roots of the war, we have uncovered just why Ukraine and Crimea are so important to Russia. Throughout the 20th century, Ukraine had been important to Russia for three reasons: it was part of its fertile Black Earth region, its ‘bread basket’; it was also a rapidly industrialising region – the 1897 census showed the importance of Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and new cities in the mining and metallurgic centres of the Donbass. Ukraine produced one-third of Russia’s wheat and 80% of its grain exports, it produced 80% of its sugar too, but also 70% of its coal, almost 70% of its cast iron and almost 60% of its steel. Add to this, the importance of the Black Sea as a trading route.
And that 1897 census showed that its total population, standing then at over 22 million out of a total population of approximately 120 million, was considerable: 18%. It is reasonable to say that if Russia had lost Ukraine at this point in its history, it would have ceased to be regarded as a Great Power. And though we have been here before, I will again point out that without its Slav and mostly Russian Orthodox population (as well as those of Bielorussia, today’s Belarus), Russians would have been in a minority in the empire. According to the 1897 census, without Ukraine and Bielorussia, Russians would only have accounted for 44% of the total population; with them (and of the two, Ukraine had a larger population) more than two-thirds of Russia’s population could be counted as Russian. That is part of the reason why Ukraine was referred to as ‘Little Russia’ (and Bielorussia as ‘White Russia’), it needed to be seen as such.
And at the point of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukraine remained important to its economy: its geography hadn’t changed and so it still gave Russia vital access to the Black Sea, and so the Mediterranean; it still accounted for 18% of the Soviet Union’s population, generating 17% of its GDP; it accounted for 40% of its agricultural output (in value), it contained 60% of the Soviet Union’s coal reserves and most of its titanium (essential for modern steel production).
Today, there is still its size: the second largest country in Europe after Russia, and with a population of some 44 million people – and we must remember that people are workers, consumers and taxpayers. And the economic considerations remain considerable. Russian companies were one of the largest investors in Ukraine, accounting for 7 percent of total foreign investment in 2013 and millions of Ukrainians worked in Russia, indeed the Russia-Ukraine border was the second-largest migration corridor in the world. China might have surpassed Ukraine by some degree as Russia’s leading trading partner but Ukraine remained very important. And its strategic importance has, if anything, only increased as it borders seven countries: Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, as well as Russia. And it has not far off 3,000 kilometres of coastline. And so, possessing Ukraine also enables Russia to continue to dominate the Black Sea.
But going back to Putin’s Historical Unity article, very few observers, be they academics, diplomats, politicians or military experts, saw this as a prelude to war. They were all wrong. But what led Putin to think he could be successful?
Political scientists tell us that the two critically important factors in deterrence are credibility and effect. Credibility is about convincing another power that it would pay a price for an act of aggression; effect is about the ability make it pay that price. And in Putin’s mind, at least this is what we must conclude, America and the West lacked both credibility and effect.
He had successfully taken Crimea back in 2014 and whilst the West’s response had not damaged Russia too badly, his standing had reached new heights amongst the Russian people. He had also been successful in intervening in Syria, propping up the Assad regime against Western backed rebels. Whilst America was bitterly divided thanks to the Trump presidency and Europe divided, if less bitterly, by Brexit but also by an upsurge in far-right populism, for example in Hungary, Poland, Austria, Italy and France, in fact to different degrees, throughout Europe. And Europe’s great anchor, Angela Merkel, German chancellor since 2005, had stepped down. Plus, Europe had allowed itself to become reliant on Russian gas. Whilst turning to America, its dealings with Iran and North Korea had made it seem weak. Trump had rattled NATO demanding the Europeans pay more towards NATOs costs. And America’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan had left the Biden government desperate to avoid another commitment.
So, Putin seized his moment. What he hadn’t expected was that his generals would be so incompetent, nor that the Ukrainians would put up such a stiff defence, nor that NATO and the broader West would hold firm. And so, with the war more than a year old now, we see no end in sight to the desperate suffering of the Ukrainian people, and to the Russian soldiers too, and to the economic price being paid all over the world.
In the spirit of balance
This will be a controversial episode. It’s also going to have a focus on people as the victims of war. But let me make it clear from the start that I, personally, think Putin is an extremely dangerous leader. I think he is an autocrat. And I think he is a bully. And I think that he and the Russian media spin a load of half-truths as well as downright lies. And what war crimes he and Russia is accused of, can mostly be justified. BUT, I’m setting out to provoke you in this episode. Not to be provocative for its own sake, certainly not to be sensationalist; but to get us all to think about what we are being told. Because history shows us that there are other stories to be told too.
Now I think I’ve dealt as much as I want to with regard to Putin’s claim of Russian sovereignty in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, at least. I’ve likened it to the relationship between England and Ireland, England and Scotland, and I could have thrown in Wales too. As a Brit, could I throw the Falkland Islands (or Las Malvinas) into the pot too? Putin sees Ukraine and Russia as sharing ‘essentially the same historical and spiritual space.’ Britain and Argentina went to war over these islands and interestingly, neither country can point to the same kind of affinity as Putin can with Ukraine. Whereas both General Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher could see a huge political advantage to be gained from a successful war. Interesting, I think.
But let’s consider the covert actions in eastern Ukraine post Maiden Uprising 2014. Russia has undoubtedly been involved in encouraging and assisting unrest by pro-Russian separatists in the regions of eastern Ukraine. BUT (and you’re going to hear this word a lot in this episode) what about Suez in 1956 when, after the Egyptian President had unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal, the British and French, conspired with the Israelis, and fabricated an Israeli attack on the Sinai Peninsula in order to justify the British and French sending troops to protect the canal. Yes, also in 1956, Russia sent in tanks to crush a move for greater freedom in Hungary, but my point is to show that we are not free of blame to the charges aimed at Putin.
And talking of canals, at the end of 1989 George HW Bush sent in troops to Panama in order to protect Americans stationed in military bases protecting the Panama Canal, built by, and strategically important to, America. But he did so to force a regime change as well. Now President Noriega was utterly corrupt receiving money from drug traffickers and helping them launder their money, and he was refusing to accept the result of the recent election in Panama and hold onto power himself (remind you of anyone?). Still, America was acting as judge and jury in the affairs of another country, indeed Noriega was eventually taken back to America where he was tried, convicted and imprisoned.
BUT this is the same Noriega who had helped America in sabotaging the forces of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (and the revolutionaries of the FMLN in El Salvador for that matter). Following the corrupt Somoza years, the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had worked to reduce inequality and poverty in the country but it earned the wrath of America as it clearly leaned to the Left with ties to Cuba, Russia and other communist states, and the government moved to make Nicaragua a one-party state. As a result Ronald Reagan authorised funds for the recruiting, training, and arming of Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries: the Contras.
Then there was the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 when about 1,500 exiles were trained in secret in Guatemala. The plan was to land them in a part of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs. They would be supported by American planes, painted to look like Cuban air force planes. It was expected that, once successfully landed, the Cuban population would join them in a popular uprising.
And what about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave President Johnson the power to ‘take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression and achieve peace and security.’ In effect, it gave the American president the power to go to war in Vietnam. It was passed by Congress following an alleged incident in the Gulf of Tonkin when American gun boats, operating in North Vietnamese waters, were twice attacked. But President Johnson knew there were serious doubts about whether the second incident that led to the resolution had in fact occurred. The conditions at the time had put the incident in grave doubt. But he didn’t tell Congress about the doubts and so the resolution was passed – unanimously in the House of Representatives and with only two votes against in the Senate – and America went to war.
You may well be saying what about Chile, what about Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, what about Libya, and so on and so. Well, I’ve just presented a few examples. But you get my point. Putin and Russia have instigated covert as well as outright military action against other sovereign states too, but so have Britain and America, and other countries. And I think we’ve also dealt with actually invading another sovereign country too.
So, let’s move on to war crimes.
This is what the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), an American government agency set up in 1976 to strengthen the legitimacy of human rights monitoring has to say: ‘Well-documented Russian bombings and missile strikes in Ukraine have decimated hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings, including a theatre in Mariupol where hundreds of children were sheltering and the Kramatorsk rail station where thousands were waiting to escape the Russian onslaught. The withdrawal of Russian troops from towns like Bucha, Chernihiv, and Sumy has revealed horrific scenes of civilian carnage, mass graves, and reports of rape and torture.’ We could add that a hospital in Mariupol was also hit.
The resulting report, issued on April 14, found ‘clear patterns of international humanitarian law violations by the Russian forces’ and recommended further investigations to ‘establish individual criminal responsibility for war crimes.’
Whilst the United Nations has said that its investigators, reporting to the UN Human Rights Council, have concluded that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.
All of which is horrific and should be loudly condemned and everything possible done to bring the perpetrators of such atrocities to justice. No question about that. However, I’m going to introduce another big BUT
And we’ll begin with the indiscriminate shelling and bombing and the resulting civilian casualties. Well, Germany had blitzed Britain in 1940 and 1941 but though horrific for those who experienced it, the scale of that bombing was nothing compared to the area bombing by Britain and America of Germany from 1942 onwards in WW2. For example, in air raids on Hamburg that lasted over eight days in July, 1943, a mixture of blockbuster and incendiary bombs caused fires that destroyed 50% of houses and damaged a further 25%. The bombing caused a tornado of swirling hot air reaching 800 °C or 1,500 °F. More than 40,000 civilians were killed and a million forced to flee the city.
Throughout the winter of 1942-3, German cities, including Berlin, were destroyed on a scale hard to imagine. Air Marshal, Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command and nicknamed ‘Bomber’ Harris, was very frank and unapologetic about his aim: ‘the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany.’ He went on to say that ‘… the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.’ It was the same with the fire-bombing of Tokyo. On the night of March 9th, 1945, American planes began dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over just 48 hours. Some forty square kilometres in and around Tokyo were incinerated, and somewhere between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed. It was the deadliest single firestorm in recorded history. And then there was Hiroshima and Nagasaki too.
Then we have the concept of collateral damage – Russians kill civilians whilst America and the West inflicts “collateral damage”. The phrase was first used in the Vietnam War and is now an essential part of American military vocabulary.
And what of that collateral damage in the Vietnam War? Where to start? Having just looked at the damage inflicted on Germany and Japan in WW2, it’s a sobering to consider that more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped on Germany and Japan combined. And incidentally, another sobering fact: more civilians died in the Korean War than had died in WW2. Indeed, soldiers and civilian deaths in Korea added up to 10% of the population. But to Vietnam – bombing camapaigns like Rolling Thunder launched early in the war and Linebacker I and II launched towards its end, targeted industrial as well as military and strategic targets in North. And, of course, there was collateral damage. Take, for example, the raid on Ben Tre in February, 1968 when American bombs obliterated most of the town. An unidentified American officer gave Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett his reason for the raid: ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.’ Though the validity of the quote has been questioned by some, it does sum up American strategy in the war. And incidentally, from 1969 to 1973, American bombs also killed between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian peasants when America wasn’t at war with Cambodia.
But there are bombs and there are bombs. All bombs can kill and maim but the use of napalm is particularly reprehensible. Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius (1,500–2,200°F). The skin actually melts and it causes burns that can be too deep to heal. The body is covered with a tar-like substance and when, in understandable panic, a victim tries to wipe it off their body, they merely spread it. The Americans thought they had had success with it in the Korean War, and it was used from the beginning in Vietnam. Indeed, between 1963 and 1973, almost 400,000 tons of napalm were dropped on Vietnam.
One of the iconic photographs of the Vietnam War is that of the, then, nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc. It was taken by Nick Ut in 1972. Kim was photographed running naked from her village, screaming in agony, the victim of an indiscriminate napalm attack. The photograph led to an incredible story, one with a happy ending and you really should check it out – there are plenty of articles and YouTube clips for you to check. It really is a wonderful example of the incredible human spirit that history over and over again demonstrates for us (and which will be a topic for a future episode)
However, I’m moving on to another horrendous weapon used by the Americans in Vietnam: Agent Orange. This is a highly toxic herbicide which was sprayed on thousands of square kilometres of jungle (over 80 million litres was used) in order to destroy the foliage which the Vietcong used to great success as cover. It did destroy some foliage but as any school kid could have told us, it also got into the water systems and the food chain and so, poisoned people too, and was doing so long after the war had ended. Vietnam claims there have been almost five million victims of poisoning so far, four generations, with three million of them from Agent Orange: people born deformed and disabled, people who had contracted diabetes and cancer as a result. Until 2007, America denied any responsibility. Well, back in 2002, I think it was, I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh city when it was called the Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression and the examples of deformed foetuses preserved in jars of formaldehyde has stayed with me and will do forever.
Onto more recent conflicts. In February, 1991, in the first Gulf War, American planes dropped laser precision-guided bombs onto a shelter in Baghdad killing 408 civilians. Pentagon and CIA officials argued that the shelter was being used as an alternate command post, an assessment that was supported by a later White House report. When US bombs hit a civilian warehouse in Afghanistan in late 2001, Donald Rumsfeld joked, ‘We’re not running out of targets, Afghanistan is.’ It was, to say the least, an unfortunate joke. In 2008, in the Haska Meyna wedding party airstrike, 47 civilians were killed, mostly women and children, including the bride. America denied that civilians were killed in the incident but a commission of the Afghan senate found differently. At least eight wedding parties have been attacked by American forces with almost 300 deaths in total: six in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and one in Yemen. Funerals and a baby-naming ceremony have also been attacked. And in 2015, repeated American airstrikes destroyed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, killing forty-two people, including patients, caretakers, and staff. The charity called it a war crime. The American military accepted what had happened calling the incident “collateral damage” but never took responsibility for it.
I’m not for a second suggesting these were deliberate attacks. Tragically, these mistakes happen in war. BUT they happen on all sides.
Now, I also referred to the Malaysian airline that was shot down in 2014 a couple of episodes ago: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 with 283 passengers and 15 crew lost. BUT there have been a frightening number of planes shot out of the sky in war zones: we are heading towards fifty such incidents would you believe. It wasn’t the first to be linked to Russia either. In 1983 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter after it strayed into Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers and crew died. Another Korean Air Lines flight had been shot down in 1978, again after straying into Soviet airspace but this time the plane managed an emergency landing. Still, two passengers died. And Ukraine has been to blame for another tragic incident. In 2001, Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 was shot down over the Black Sea by a surface-to-air missile. All 66 passengers and 12 crew) died. And Ukraine was a victim when Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after mistaking it for an American cruise missile. All 176 people on board were killed. And my last example, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by an American missile killing all 290 passengers and crew. The missile was fired from USS Vincennes which was in Iranian waters and mistook the plane for a hostile Iranian fighter.
More balance