Alex Shalashilin Ok I think as an admin it is time for me to say a few things about the current situation in Ukraine and address those that have come here to defend the new Ukrainian authorities. I am a quarter Ukrainian. I would say a good 70% of Russians, if not more, have close or distant relatives in Ukraine. Naturally I am sad, that a country, whose people Russians consider close friends is failing as a state and is on a threshold to a civil conflict. Why might you ask are Russians so concerned about this issue? Well for starts I do not want to see another Syria erupt next to our borders and Russia be flooded with refugees. I do not want to see our soldiers killing or being killed from by a nation that I consider close and friendly. For Russians, Ukraine is not just a neighbour. Kiev, the capital, is the cradle of Russian civilisation and Orthodox faith. Look at famous Russians from history. Nikolay Gogol, Anton Chekhov - where would Russian literature be without them? They came from Ukraine. Sergey Korolyov - father of Soviet rocketry and space programme - Ukrainian. Leonid Brezhnev, the longest-serving leader of the USSR - also Ukrainian. Look at the current Russian leadership - Valentina Matviyenko, former head of St. Petersburg and now speaker of the Federation council (the upper house of our parliament) - Ukrainian. Any surname that ends with -ko or a -uk automatically points to likely Ukrainian heritage of that person (as opposed to the Russian -ov or -in). In late 1991 a trio of turncoats, blinded by the promises of western democracy and welfare cut apart a country that their people took centuries to build. I am not sorry for the communist leadership, good riddance to that, but the people were divided. Belarusians, having the most foresight and diligence, were quick to dismiss these western freedoms and avoided succumbing to such reforms where indeed, the lucky few get everything, and the rest - absolutely nothing. In 1994 they elected a president, despite being branded as the last dictator of Europe, managed to give Belarus the highest living standards and keep a developed economy to date. Russia underwent a cataclysm of events in the 1990s that ultimately brought Vladimir Putin to power. Now as a Russian, I have reasons not to share this euphoria about him that people here express, however if anything, his biggest achievement is that for more than a decade and half Russia has avoided any colour revolutions and other cataclysms, allowing it to slowly but surely re-establish itself as a world superpower. What about Ukraine then? Well you have to be blind to not see the obvious. Look at any election or language usage map. There is no need to lie that the country is very polarised. On one side you have the Russian-speaking east and south, that is much closer in culture and mentality to Russia proper. On the other hand you have core Ukrainian regions. Why do I say core? Because eastern and southern Ukraine were void of population when Russia won them from the Ottoman Empire in late 18t century. Over the next 250 years they were extensively settled and developed by migrants coming from all over the Empire and later the Union. The population has always been mixed, and as Russia was ruling then, it is not hard to see why the Russian language and culture prevailed there. The core lands, on the other hand, represent the rich Ukrainian culture. My Ukrainian heritage comes from Chernigov (or should I say Chernihiv) region. Families were large back then, but being densely populated, there was little to inherit for all the siblings, so many wisely took the offer to migrate and colonise a distant region of the Empire, where land was up for grabs, and new industries required workers. My grandmothers predecessors migrated to a region in eastern Siberia, next to the city of Irkutsk. What I recall of my great grandmother, who sadly passed away when I was five, is her very distinct dialect that was much more Ukrainian than Russian. As for traditions including cuisine and folklore, they survive with that part of my family to date. Now the general South/East and Centre/West divide will be incomplete without mentioning a few of the locales, such as the Rusyn populated Transcarpathia, Crimea, the amazing city of Odessa that any Russian-speaking person MUST visit in his lifetime. However I want to focus on the region that is called Galicia. The west of Ukraine, consisting of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and most of Ternopil provinces. Unlike the rest of Ukraine, which joined Russia from 1654 to 1795, this part was re-united briefly with the rest of Ukraine in 1918, again in 1939 and became a permanent part of the country from 1944 onwards. The history of this region is tragic and bloody and I will leave the reader to research the topic himself. Just on the surface though, whereas Ukraine is Orthodox, Galicia is Greek-Catholic. The differences are clear in terms of folklore, linguistically they speak a very distinct dialect. However what sets them apart from the rest of Ukraine is their mentality. I would only point out that when Nazi Germany occupied Ukraine in 1941, the population was considered ariyanised enough and the region was subjugated directly to the Reich. Whereas Ukrainians were being daily murdered raped and terrorised by the nazi troops, Galicians were offered to collaborate. Many did, a whole SS division (the 14th Grenadier) was enlisted from local volunteers. Yet, modern Ukrainian revisionist historiography will downplay that fact. Instead they will tell you about another force, one that was neither Nazi or Soviet, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, led by a Stepan Bandera, that reportedly fought for the independence of Ukraine against the two. What they will not tell you, is that when a group of historians recently queried the German archives, they found not a single documented case of any engagement between the Wehrmacht and these freedom fighters (to coin a contemporary term). Nor will they explain why the Polish people, who made as much as half of the population disappeared by the time the Red Army liberated western Ukraine. Lastly they will forget to mention what declassified KGB documents clearly show, as to how this resistance came to abrupt end by 1949, when the local population had enough of terror and war and actively supported Soviet law enforcement. I am not going to condone the latter, which at times was very harsh as well. I said above, I hold no sympathy for communism both in theory and in particular in the inhumane practice that we had to bear a good seven decades of. Anyhow let me now fast forward to the present and lets review the events that have unfolded. Initially I took little notice of this Euromaidan gathering. Ukraines volatile politics made Russians oblivious to such events as a daily matter. However, when the first clashes erupted, what was immediately evident, was that under this façade of European values, which I am not going to lie, was genuine in the beginning, soon surfaced the horrible face of xenophobic Ukrainian nationalism. It would be easy to say that its proponents came from Galicia only. Sadly, twenty years of decay and romantic storytelling have done their job on the young generation of central Ukraine. We all know what happened, the Ukrainian president fled like the coward he is (I do not mourn him at all), and a group of opportunists seized the country... Surviving statues of Lenin fell, legislature that guaranteed equal rights to minority languages was repelled, former oligarchs were appointed to the eastern provinces... and something went wrong. First Sevastopol, then Crimea, then Kharkov, yesterday - Donetsk, now - Odessa and Lugansk... Well, to those who are defending Maidan and accusing Russia, I can only say well done. Your three month long parade by taking regional administrations, not abiding to law, have set an example. And you have done something that I even I thought was impossible to do. You have awoken the Russian bear! In your own country, right under your nose. Honestly I always thought that despite the polar differences of East vs West of Ukraine, the two would cancel each other out where they meet, in Kiev. For the past two decades and even in Soviet times this worked, and unity was thus possible. All the effort that you put into toppling the establishment paid off. You destroyed that balance, and now its swinging back at you. Where does leave Russia? Would the United States stand by when something like that starts to brew next to her borders? Of course not. It seizes the moment and gains the best positions for a future bargain. Russia is also a superpower and it too has to play by the rules, yes at your expense. The bargain is not going to be between the Ukrainian junta or Yanukovych, as both are powerless political corpses, but between EU and the US. Whether or not we will directly annex South East Ukraine or leave a loyal client state is actually irrelevant here. Just how deep into Ukraine will Russia probe? IMO there is no need to venture outside the friendly south and east of the country. Will there be blood? Doubtful, given how Ukrainian units in Crimea are surrendering to the new authorities I cannot foresee any armed resistance. If Russia was to go all the way to Galicia, there will be hostile welcome, but what exactly has it got that Russia forgot? The only reason that I can see Russian troops in Kiev is to stop the South-Eastern paramilitaries from doing a little vengeance raid after two decades of being told they are second-class people because they speak a different language and refuse to honour those that collaborated with Germans... Whatever actually happens, you should be grateful. Now you dont need to carry the façade of being friendly to Russia or Russians. You dont need to tolerate memorials to your forefathers who died in the Great Patriotic War. You dont need to worry about looking embarrassed before WWII veterans, because giving the drop in life expectancy that your adventure is about to result in, not many are going to stick about. You dont need to tolerate the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Gods blesses righteous and judges what is foul. You can head straight into NATO or EU, wherever you want, whether the people there will accept such a tax burden or not is of little worry to me. You are an INDEPENDENT nation, why should I care about what is not mine? Also you dont need to worry about Russian chauvinism. Back in 1991 Russia was the first country to recognise your independence. In 2004 we quietly watched your euphoria of Yuschenkos victory turn sour and dismissed it as a lesson of how not to make politics. After 2014, I can assure you that there is not a single Russian that believes that Ukrainians are not a different people. Of course, with hindsight, I can see that it was grave mistake for Stalin to strip the Polish people of their historical city of Lwow. Even though I am not Georgian, I apologise to Polish people reading this, for such an unfair chapter of history along with the Warsaw uprising and the like... Is it painful to admit that what is once part of you is no longer there? Maybe... Russia underwent a transformation at the close late 20th century, that left us battered, bruised and divided among several countries. Now we realise that one of our extremities has developed gangrene. You do what you have to do here. Looking at the winter paralympics that are about to kick off in a few days, I know that amputees have all the chances in life. And economically, central Ukraine is not exactly a limb or anything... Just a patch of dead skin... One thing that you can be sure of, is that we WILL cherish the memory of the proud Ukrainian nation that once was. The nation that gave our literature - Gogol, our music - Bortiansky and many more. We will proudly tell our grandchildren of the mighty Ukrainian warriors who fought and died during the war, starting from partisans like Sydir Kovpak and ending in marshals like Pavlo Rybalko. That Ukraine will forever live inside all of us.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 22:33:36 +0000
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