The Gates of Europe

by Serhii Plokhy

  Since the fall of the USSR, the Russian nation-building project has switched its focus to the idea of forming a single Russian nation not divided into branches and unifying the Eastern Slavs on the basis of the Russian language and culture. Ukraine has become the first testing ground for this model outside the Russian Federation.

  The new model of Russian identity, which stresses the indivisibility of the Russian nation, closely associated with the Russian language and culture, poses a fundamental challenge to the Ukrainian nation-building project. From its beginnings in the nineteenth century, that project placed the Ukrainian language and culture at its center, but from the outset it also allowed for the use of other languages and cultures, as attested, for example, by the Russian-language writings of Taras Shevchenko, whom many regard as the spiritual founder of the Ukrainian nation. Bilingualism and multiculturalism have become a norm in post-Soviet Ukraine, extending membership in the Ukrainian nation to people of various ethnic and religious backgrounds. This has had a direct impact on the course of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Contrary to the Kremlin’s expectations, Russian aggression failed to mobilize the support of ethnic Russians outside the areas directly controlled by the Russian army—the Crimea and those parts of the Donbas seized by Russian mercenaries and Russia-backed insurgents.

  According to data provided by the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, with Russians constituting 17 percent of the Ukrainian population, only 5 percent of those polled considered themselves exclusively Russian: the rest identified as both Russian and Ukrainian. Even those who considered themselves exclusively Russian often opposed Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs, refusing to associate themselves with Putin’s regime. “Ukraine is my Homeland. Russian is my native language. And I would like to be saved by Pushkin. And delivered from sorrow and unrest, also by Pushkin. Pushkin, not Putin,” wrote one of Kyiv’s ethnic Russians in her Facebook account. The ideology of the “Russian World,” which combines Russian nationalism with Russian Orthodoxy and which Moscow and Russian-backed insurgents have promoted as an alternative to the pro-European choice of the Maidan protesters, has helped strengthen the Ukrainian-Jewish pro-European alliance developing in Ukraine since 1991. “I have said for a long time that an alliance between Ukrainians and Jews is a pledge of our common future,” posted a pro-Maidan activist on his Facebook account.

  History has left Ukraine united in one state but divided along numerous regional lines that echo the cultural and political boundaries of the past. The line between the parklands of central Ukraine and the southern steppes became a porous border between the predominantly agricultural areas to the north and the urban centers of the mineral-rich steppes to the south. The frontier of Western and Eastern Christianity, after reaching the Dnieper in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, retreated to Galicia and now recalls the border between the Habsburg and Russian empires of the pre–World War I era. Within the former Habsburg possessions, Galicia differs from the largely Hungarian-ruled Transcarpathia and the former Moldavian province of Bukovyna. Within the former Russian Empire, Volhynia, which was under Polish rule during the interwar period, is different from Podolia, which stayed under Soviet rule for most of the twentieth century. There is also a difference between the formerly Polish-ruled lands on the Right Bank of the Dnieper and those of the former Cossack Hetmanate on its Left Bank, as well as between the Cossack lands and those colonized largely through the centralized efforts of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The borders of those lands also serve as a line between Ukrainians who are more comfortable speaking Ukrainian and those who prefer Russian in everyday speech.

  In reality, Ukrainian regionalism is even more complex than the account of it just presented. There are differences between the old Cossack lands of the former Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine, while the southern Ukrainian province of Mykolaiv differs greatly in ethnic composition, language use, and voting behavior from the Crimea, which was attached to Ukraine only in 1954. But despite all these differences, Ukraine’s regions stick together because the borders indicated above, which were quite distinct in the past, would be almost impossible to reestablish today. Nowadays one sees a patchwork of linguistic, cultural, economic, and political transition zones that link different regions to one another and keep the country together. In practice, there is no easily identifiable cultural boundary dividing the Crimea from the neighboring regions of southern Ukraine or the Donbas from the other eastern regions. None of the historical regions has shown a strong desire to leave Ukraine; nor have elites managed to mobilize citizens in support of secession. True, such mobilization has taken place in the Crimea and the Donbas, but only as a consequence of Russian annexation or intervention.

  A symbolic farewell to the Soviet past—the demolition of remaining monuments to Lenin, more than five hundred altogether, in a few weeks—accompanied the Revolution of Dignity. Among the anti-Kyiv insurgents in the Donbas, there were many defenders of the old Soviet values. But Russian mercenaries and volunteers brought to the region an overarching idea of a different kind. Like the best known of the Russian commanders, Igor Girkin, they came to the Donbas to defend the values of the “Russian World” against the West. In that context, they saw Ukraine as a battleground between corrupt Western values, including democracy, individual freedoms, human rights, and, especially, the rights of sexual minorities on the one hand and traditional Russian values on the other. By that logic, Western propaganda had simply addled the Ukrainians’ minds. It was up to the Russians to show them the light.

  This interpretation of the conflict has deep roots in the Russian culture and intellectual tradition. While one can hardly imagine modern Russian history without Russian participation in European culture, it is also true that for centuries Russia was cut off from the West or engaged in confrontation with the countries of central and western Europe. Which set of historical experiences best defines Russia’s love-hate relationship with the West? In the enduring Russian intellectual debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles, which began in the early nineteenth century and pitted the view of Russia as part of Europe against that of Russia as a distinct civilization with a world mission, the descendants of the Slavophiles and anti-Westerners now have the upper hand.

  As for Ukraine, its claim to independence has always had a European orientation, which is one consequence of Ukraine’s experience as a country located on the East-West divide between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, central European and Eurasian empires, and the political and social practices they brought with them. This location on the border of several cultural spaces helped make Ukraine a contact zone in which Ukrainians of different persuasions could learn to coexist. It also helped create regional divisions, which participants in the current conflict have exploited. Ukraine has always been known, and lately it has been much praised, for the cultural hybridity of its society, but how much hybridity a nation can bear and still remain united in the face of a “hybrid war” is one of the important questions now being decided in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

  The pro-European revolution in Ukraine, which broke out a quarter century after the end of the Cold War, took a page from the Cold War fascination with the European West shared by the dissidents of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries of the region, in some cases turning that fascination into a new national religion. The Revolution of Dignity and the war brought about a geopolitical reorientation of Ukrainian society. The proportion of those with positive attitudes toward Russia decreased from 80 percent in January 2014 to under 50 percent in September of the same year. In November 2014, 64 percent of those polled supported Ukraine’s accession to the European Union (that figure had stood at 39 percent in November 2013). In April 2014, only a third of Ukrainians had wanted their country to join NATO; in November 2014, more than half supported that course. There can be little doubt that the experience of war not only united most Ukrainians but also turned the country’s sy
mpathies westward.

  Historically, the shock of war, the humiliation of defeat, and the open wound of lost territories have served as potent instruments for building national solidarity and forging a strong national identity. The partitions of Poland in the second half of the eighteenth century wiped the Polish state off the map of Europe but served as a starting point for the formation of modern Polish nationalism, while the Napoleonic invasion of Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century gave rise to pan-German ideas and promoted the development of modern German nationalism. Memories of defeat and lost territory have fired the national imaginations of French and Poles, Serbs and Czechs. Invaded, humiliated, and war-torn Ukraine seems to be following that general pattern.

  The Russian annexation of the Crimea, the hybrid war in the Donbas, and attempts to destabilize the rest of the country created a new and dangerous situation not only in Ukraine but also in Europe as a whole. For the first time since the end of World War II, a major European power made war on a weaker neighbor and annexed part of the territory of a sovereign state. The Russian invasion breached not only the Russo-Ukrainian treaty of 1997 but also the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which had offered Ukraine security assurances in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons and acceding to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as a nonnuclear state. The unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine threatened the foundations of international order—a threat to which the European Union and most of the world were not prepared to respond but one that demands appropriate counteraction. Whatever the outcome of the current Ukraine Crisis, on its resolution depends not only the future of Ukraine but also that of relations between Europe’s east and west—Russia and the European Union—and thus the future of Europe as a whole.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Jill Kneerim for finding an excellent home for the manuscript; Lara Heimert for enthusiastically embracing the challenge of editing and publishing the book; her Basic Books team, especially Roger Labrie, for making that possible; Myroslav Yurkevich for editing different versions of the manuscript; my wife, Olena, for criticizing and eventually endorsing it; Volodymyr Kulyk and Roman Procyk for correcting embarrassing mistakes; my graduate student Megan Duncan Smith for being a fabulous teaching fellow in my course “Frontiers of Europe: Ukraine Since 1500,” where I tested some of the ideas presented in the book; the Harvard graduate and undergraduate students who took that course in the fall of 2014 for their questions, e-mails, and course website queries and comments—they have all made their way into this book. Finally, I want to thank everyone who, throughout my long career as a historian and teacher, helped me understand what this book should and should not be about. They do not, of course, bear the blame for any shortcomings.

  Historical Timeline

  World History: 45,000 BC Humans arrive in southern Europe.

  45,000–43,000 BCNeanderthal mammoth hunters build their dwellings in Ukraine.

  42,000–40,000 BCHumans between the Danube and Dnieper Rivers domesticate the horse.

  4500–3000 BCTribes of the Neolithic Cucuteni-Trypilian culture, producers of clay statues and colored pottery, call lands between the Danube and the Dnieper their home.

  World History: 3500 BC Sumerians migrate to Mesopotamia.

  1300–750 BCCimmerian Kingdom, homeland of the fictional Conan the Barbarian, establishes its rule over the Pontic steppes of southern Ukraine.

  750–250 BCScythian horsemen drive out the Cimmerians.

  750–500 BCGreek trading colonies are established on the northern shore of the Black Sea; Greeks imagine that mythical figures such as Amazon female warriors populate the Ukrainian steppes to the north.

  World History: 753 BC Legendary founding of Rome.

  512 BCDarius the Great of Persia marches through the Pontic steppes in a vain attempt to defeat the Scythian army.

  Ca. 485–425 BCLife and times of Herodotus, who described Scythia and classified its population as belonging to various strata, including Royal Scythians and Scythian agriculturalists, the settled population of the forest-steppe borderland.

  250 BC–250 ADSarmatians take control of the steppes from the Scythians.

  1–100Romans establish their presence in the Greek colonies; Strabo identifies the Don River as the eastern border of Europe, leaving present-day Ukrainian territories on the European side of the Europe-Asia divide.

  World History: ca. 30 Jesus enters Jerusalem.

  250–375Goths defeat the Sarmatians and establish their rule over Ukrainian lands.

  375–650Period of migrations: Huns, Avars, and Bulgars make their way through the Pontic steppes.

  Ca. 551Historian Jordanes locates Slavic tribes of Sclaveni and Antes between the Danube and the Dnieper; earlier in the century, the Antes make a name for themselves by attacking the Roman Empire.

  650–900Khazar kaganate collects tribute from Slavic tribes in Ukraine.

  World History: 800 Charlemagne is crowned emperor of the Romans.

  838First mention of Rus’ Vikings in Western sources.

  860First Rus’ attack on Constantinople from the northern shores of the Black Sea.

  950Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus describes trade relations with Rus’ and the Dnieper–Black Sea route used for both trade and war.

  971Emperor John Tzimisces meets with Prince Sviatoslav of Kyiv on the Danube to negotiate a truce between Byzantium and Rus’.

  989Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv besieges the Byzantine fortress of Chersonesus in the Crimea, marries Anna, sister of Emperor Basil II of Byzantium, and accepts Christianity for himself and his realm.

  1037Prince Yaroslav the Wise completes the construction of the St. Sophia Cathedral, seat of the metropolitans of Rus’ and site of the first Rus’ library.

  World History: 1054 Rome and Constantinople divide the Christian Church.

  1054Death of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, dubbed “father-in-law of Europe” by historians because of his daughters’ marriages to members of European ruling dynasties, signals the beginning of the disintegration of Kyivan Rus’.

  1113–1125Prince Volodymyr Monomakh temporarily restores the unity of Kyivan Rus’ and promotes the writing of the Primary Chronicle, the main narrative source on the history of medieval Ukraine.

  1187–1189A Kyivan chronicler first uses the word “Ukraine” to describe the steppe borderland from Pereiaslav in the east to Galicia in the west.

  World History: 1215 Magna Carta is issued by King John of England.

  1238–1264Prince Danylo of Galicia-Volhynia, who received a crown from the pope, establishes control over most Ukrainian territories, playing the Golden Horde in the east against the Polish and Hungarian kingdoms in the west; he founds the city of Lviv.

  1240Kyiv falls to Mongol armies, and Ukraine finds itself within the sphere of influence of the Golden Horde.

  1241–1261Transcarpathia falls under the control of the kings of Hungary.

  1299–1325Metropolitan of Rus’ moves his seat from Kyiv, devastated by the Mongols, to Vladimir on the Kliazma and then to Moscow; a separate metropolitanate is established in Galicia.

  1340–1392Once powerful principality of Galicia-Volhynia divides, with Galicia going to Poland and Volhynia, along with the Dnieper region, to the Lithuanian princes.

  World History: 1347 Black Death ravages Europe.

  1359Lithuanian and Rus’ armies challenge the rule of the khans of the Golden Horde over the Ukrainian steppes in the Battle of Syni Vody; most of the Ukrainian lands become part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

  1386Prince Jogaila of Lithuania marries Queen Jadwiga of Poland, initiating the conversion of the Lithuanian elites to Catholicism and gradual unification of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

  1430–1434Rus’ (Ukrainian and Belarusian) elites
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania rebel against discriminatory policies of the Catholic rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

  1449–1478Crimean Khanate becomes independent of the Golden Horde but falls under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

  1492First mention of Ukrainian Cossacks in historical sources.

  1514Prince Kostiantyn Ostrozky defeats the Muscovite army at the Battle of Orsha in the contest between Lithuania and Muscovy for the former lands of Kyivan Rus’.

  World History: 1517 Martin Luther issues his Ninety-Five Theses.

  1569Union of Lublin between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania creates the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which Poland establishes jurisdiction over Ukraine and Lithuania maintains its rule over Belarus, creating the first administrative border between the two East Slavic lands.

  1581First complete Church Slavonic translation of the Bible is published in Ostrih.

  1590–1638Era of Cossack uprisings establishes the Cossacks as a formidable military force and distinct social order.

  1596Union of Brest brings part of the Kyiv Orthodox metropolitanate under the jurisdiction of Rome, dividing Uniates (later Greek Catholics) from Orthodox to the present day.

  1632–1646Metropolitan Peter Mohyla of Kyiv establishes the Kyivan College (future Kyiv Mohyla Academy), reforms his church along the lines of the Catholic Reformation, and presides over the drafting of the first Orthodox Confession of Faith.