First of all, let me say that we are all intelligent, reasonably well-educated people on this blog, and I’m sure nobody here shares Ian Welsh’s extreme ignorance in believing that until recently, Ukraine has been part of Russia. Even within the USSR, Ukraine was a republic with equal rights within the union of 15 separate republics. The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic had an anthem and a national flag of its own and was not considered part of Russia by anybody.
Some people are asking why Ukraine should resist becoming part of the Russian Federation today. Russia is much richer, it has oil and gas, and Ukraine’s constant problems with paying to heat and feed itself would be solved.
The problem, however, is that there is, among vast numbers of the Russian people, a deep-seated and completely interiorized xenophobic contempt for Ukrainians. Any Ukrainian will tell you that engaging with Russians in any capacity is not a pleasing experience. There are constant nasty jokes, degrading comments, offensive remarks. If you are gay, transgender, black, Native American, or Jewish, I’m sure you have had this kind of experience.
To give just one among literally hundreds of examples I could adduce, I will tell you about a conversation I once had with N. in the early stages of our relationship. We were having a discussion about the value of higher education when he said, “Well, this is a difference between your provincial worldview and my metropolitan one.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I said. “I lived my entire life in the second largest city in my country. It is a huge industrial and cultural center with a population of 1,5 million people. You come from a tiny town with the population of $35,ooo. How does it follow from this that I’m provincial and you are metropolitan?”
“Well, Ukraine is located on the outskirts,” N. shared cheerfully.
“The outskirts of what?” I asked.
He couldn’t answer, so I grew very agitated and erupted in a long lecture about colonial mentality.
Mind you, this was a conversation between a highly-educated, very well-read man who deeply loved a woman and wanted to make a good impression on her. It simply never occurred to him that there might be anything wrong with this vision of Ukrainians. This was just a fact that he was relating with no desire to wound.
Would it be reasonable for Ukrainians to want to be part of a country where they are despised as a matter of course?
P.S. For those who know Russian, here is a beautiful post on this subject from my favorite blogger, an 89-year-old representative of the true Russian intelligentsia.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well before 1917 Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and that is actually not that long ago. But, by the same definition Algeria was part of France until 1962 and Angola part of Portugal until 1975. Ukraine was of course never part of the RSFSR or Russian Federation. However, the “equality” of nationalities in the USSR was a combination of a joke and a very clever implementation of the logical conclusion of Lord Lugard’s strategy of indirect rule. Indirect rule can best be summed up as making representatives of the subjected people rule themselves on your behalf. Or to use another term the “co-option” of local elites as collaborators in maintaining political and economic domination by a metropolitan center.
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Part of the Russian Empire and part of Russia are two completely different things. Nobody would say “the US is part of England” because the territories used to belong to the British Empire.
And even though the republics didn’t really have the right to leave the union, their existence was far from a mere formality. Stalin and Lenin had a massive disagreement when Stalin wanted to turn the conquered territories into autonomies. Lenin won, of course, and what a great thing that was because the victory in WWII would have been doubtful otherwise.
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Well not every nationality got a republic. But, for the main purpose of such national divisions just as the main purpose of ruling through “chiefs” ie indirect rule by the British in West Africa was to maintain political and economic control over ethnically distinct territories. The representatives of the titular nationalities in the republican governments and communist party branches were largely symbolic in political terms and those that attempted to achieve real autonomy were removed. What was real just in Africa is that national territories supported Soviet approved versions of the national cultures.
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As for local elites, come on, this was the USSR, what local elites?
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The non-Russian communist party members in the republics. People like Nazerbayev in Kazakhstan and Karimov in Uzbekistan before the USSR broke apart.
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Ukrainian politics seems to be impossible to understand for a non-Ukrainian. From what I can gather, none of the politicians have much popular support, they suspect each other of corruption, and they are all prepared to grab as much power for their own party as possible.
So, who are the trustworthy Ukrainian politicians?
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Ukrainians will figure all that out after the foreign troops are removed from their territory and stop terrorizing people.
There are many serious issues facing Ukraine. But it isn’t like history has known any problem-free countries. What we need to remember, I think, is that people should get a chance to figure things out without threat of foreign invasion.
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Of course people should be able to figure things out without threat of foreign invasion. (If you’re Ukraine, good luck with that.)
But I don’t understand, for instance, why Yanukovich, who won the 2004 election unfairly, and was removed, ran and won in 2010, in what was declared to be a fair election. Why vote for someone who you already know is dishonest?
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The American people voted for Bush for the second time after it was already obvious that he was a liar. But nobody cared. I didn’t get why Americans did that just like I was puzzled when Ukrainians voted for Yanukovich. So I’m with you here, this was a weird decision. The opportunities offered by the Orange Revolution were squandered idiotically, and this was the result.
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I’m terribly confused by this idea that Ukraine cannot feed itself. I get that they need to import natural gas or heating oil to heat homes. But I thought that Ukraine was the Saskatchewan of Europe when it came to growing cereal crops. The country has many problems, i do not doubt (living next door to Russia being one of them), but I don’t understand how growing food could be one of those problems. Am I missing something? Did something change?
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Enormous efforts were made during the Soviet times to make sure that Ukrainian famous gift for hard work and entrepreneurship was destroyed and the links of Ukrainians to their land were broken. That was the whole point of Holodomor. The peasants who loved the land were all either deported or killed or starved to death. This is why I’m saying that a serious reckoning with history is crucial.
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