Comment by Ivaylo Noyzi Tsvetkov:
I won't keep you waiting. Part of the aggressive Putin's propaganda self-justification for his dirty war is that the concept of a “national Ukraine“ is based on a serious fabrication about this country, namely, that it was created by the Bolsheviks and specifically by Lenin. That is, according to today's Russian military “historicity“, Ukraine (with an emphasis on the ”) was entirely created by Bolshevik Russia – a process that began immediately after 1917.
It's worse – if you listen to and watch Russian “historians“ on channels like RIA Novosti, Ukraine is a “bastard“ personally of Vladimir Ilyich, to the extent (I add) that he was at all himself in these last years of his life. According to today's military Kremlin, this is almost a mistake of the “great“ bald leader, because without Lenin today's Ukraine would not be able to claim to be a separate state (especially since Russian is the first or second mother tongue for all Ukrainians). Maria Zakharova: “Ukraine has never had an independent state tradition“. You mean - “it was always ours“.
Lenin's historical mistake?
I, on the other hand, historically and culturally, doubt it. Russian pro-government sources speak of Lenin's concessions to the Ukrainian nationalists of the time and of “historical” his mistake, but this does not take into account the chaos of the civil war in the future USSR, as well as the Ukrainian understanding of independence - the nationalism there rightly claims that the Ukrainian awakening was already in the 18th century, when this future country was divided between Tsarist Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian unification and even the Ottoman Empire.
In the aforementioned 18th century, we have a hetmanship of freedom-loving Cossacks (without the Galician one later), which still ignited the hearts of Kievans; of course, it ended relatively quickly, because the empire does not tolerate such “ideas”. But I hasten to say that there has never been anything in Ukrainian history like the current one with Zelensky, humiliatingly brought to America to explain himself for the second time to the “orange” you are a possible benefactor (while before that a real “ham“ like Lavrov would go around wearing a “USSR“ t-shirt, thinking he was super cool, but that's another topic. “Ham“ in Russian means, let's put it diplomatically, as for Lavrov, not a very well-developed cultural person).
Turbulent years
But to continue quickly historically: that 1917-1921 in Ukraine is called the “war of independence“ (as part of the civil red-white quarrel after the revolution). At the moment when it was declared in Petrograd, in Kharkov and Kiev on December 24, 1917 they created the “Ukrainian People's Republic“. There followed some quarrels about what exactly was Ukraine; after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 the Germans – about to surrender – they dissolve the “Rada“, i.e. the National Assembly, and install a dictatorship headed by the former Tsarist General Skoropadsky. The German dictatorship in the last months of the First World War was brutal, but in a sense also constructive – they founded two universities and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, note.
After the defeat of Germany, it gets even more interesting – in today's Western Ukraine (the former Eastern Galicia, a province of Austria-Hungary) a “directorate“ is formed. It is assembled with the Kiev provisional government, which thinks of itself as Ukrainian, but – alas – its life is shorter than that of a praying mantis. Kiev was captured by the Red Army in February 1919. Poland, looking back, annexes Eastern Galicia, i.e. the lands around Lviv. All this ultimately does not matter, because in 1920 the whole of today's Ukraine was taken over by the Red Army; here I will spare you various desperate political arguments, because the result is one - Lenin's new constituent state swallows today's Ukraine in one bite and christens it the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Why do many people still not know that Ukraine was a separate country
In this sense, Lenin is not the architect of today's Ukrainian nation, but he is another architect of something else - of the old Russian imperial understanding that these are a priori “ours” (Little Russia?) and all the time they are pulling something, even pretending to be independent and speaking their own language. And now, in Putin's time, they even allow themselves to retaliate and kill with drones in a war that, after Trump, it is already clear that they will lose.
To summarize: yes, the USSR (created de facto only in 1922) took over Ukraine even before the false federalism, but it is precisely because of it that today most people in the world do not know that this country was separate (it can be traced back to the Great Migration of the East Slavic tribes Anty and Slavs, as well as the fact that they have nothing to do with later Russia). Not to mention that the medieval “Russian” statehood originated from Kievan Rus – a huge territory of Prince Oleg, which includes both the Moscow Varangians and the Rurikovich princes, and what not.
Monstrous crimes against Ukraine
In this Ukraine today, understood by Putin and before that by Stalin as “southern Russian territory with access to the Black Sea“, over four million people died just because of the last “Holodomor”, namely - state-induced deadly and widespread famine. Just because of this monstrous crime - in addition to all the others, which are no less monstrous at the moment - I continue to wonder at everyone who defends Russia. And what the Ukrainians experienced at the hands of the Nazis, especially in Babyn Yar, but not only, I don't feel like starting, because I'll cry.
With the existence of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, over a million and a half Jews and Ukrainians were mercilessly killed (and millions more displaced), according to the prescriptions of the “Fernichtungskrieg“, i.e. the Nazi cold accounting idea of who and how many should be killed, note, with documents to that effect. And now the Russian media are calling the Ukrainians “Nazis“ - there is no such malicious simplicity in the world. It is precisely on the Russian side, the country that suffered the most from the said “Fernichtung“.
But perhaps the most important period for Ukraine is after the collapse of the USSR. Putin, of course, reminds us that everything in the sphere of the USSR is his, but fortunately it is not so. Ukrainians held a referendum in August 1991 and voted for independence. Then, even in Donetsk and Lugansk, which today - by force or not - want to become Russian, 83% voted “for“ a new Ukraine.
Should we throw Ukraine to the bear so as not to anger it? Or maybe all of Eastern Europe?
And now what? Let's be honest: probably dividing Eastern and Western Ukraine in half along the Dnieper on the Korean principle (i.e. forcing Zelensky to agree to Western Ukraine and possibly cede Zaporizhia to us), as long as we are very careful not to anger the bear. We even invite her to the red carpet, we even drive her in a limousine, without realizing that almost always in history it has been about a political wild animal towards Europe and the USA.
I am not a hunter and I am seriously proud that I am not, but how do you deal with a man-eating predator? Do we invite it to eat from our hand, or? Or maybe we throw all of Eastern Europe at it again, as a feeder?
P.P. If you feel like reading more on the subject, here are a few good books to “catch up“ with me:
Reid. Anna. Borderland: A Journey Through The History Of Ukraine. Pemguin, 2015.
Edele, Mark. The Soviet Union. A Short History. Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2019.
Trofimov, Yaroslav. Our Enemies Will Vanish. ArtScroll, 2022.
Hosking, Geoffrey. A History Of The Soviet Union, 1917-1991, London, Fontana Press, 1982
Plokhy, Serhii. The Gates Of Europe. A History Of Ukraine. New York, B