In 1939 Stalin invaded Finland with the express aim of bringing the lost part of the Russian Empire into his Soviet Union. He was doing the same to the Baltic States, intent on ending their short-lived interwar independence.
That act of naked Nazi-style aggression against an independent state was glorified by a martial song titled “Let Us in, Fair Finland.” The lyrics explained why Soviet planes were bombing Helsinki and Red Army soldiers were pouring over the border into the Finnish territory: The Finnish people have been lied to and misled by their rulers for too long. Their motherland was stolen from them and now the Red Army is coming to restore Finland to its people. “We’re here to help you pay them back for all the indignities you have suffered,” the song proclaimed. “Come, Finland, throw open your gates.”
Vladimir Putin’s latest historical opus, “On the Historic Unity of the Russian and Ukrainian People,” published on the kremlin.ru website on July 12, sings the same old tune — except lacking the inspiring music of the Kyiv-born Pokrass brothers. His history is a collection of factoids fished out of Wikipedia and strung together in a manner that makes you think of turgid Soviet-era high school textbooks. His conclusions are questionable and the whole thing has nothing to do with history as a modern academic discipline.
It is also completely irrelevant. Whether or not it was a Kyivan prince who founded Moscow, Russians and Ukrainians long since have developed into separate nations. The only thing that matters is that Ukrainians overwhelmingly believe that they are a different nation and want to continue building their national state. Moreover, they overwhelmingly want to escape the historic domination — and occupation, colonial exploitation and repression — by Russia, which has left this potentially very rich country in abject poverty. Any serious discussion of them being part of the great three-pronged Russian nation (the third being Belarusians) makes Ukrainians shake with rage or laugh.
Stalin hoped to crush the Finns and install a puppet government consisting of Finnish quislings who would then ask him for the great favor of admitting Finland into the Soviet Union. Instead, the entire Finnish nation rose up to resist his plans. Putin too apparently thinks that in Ukraine there is an audience for his pathetic musings about the historic Ukrainian role as an appendix to Great Russia. He is badly mistaken — just as he was mistaken in 2014 when he thought that there was a strong pro-Russian — and anti-Ukrainian — separatist sentiment in his stillborn Novorossia.
To put Putin’s conclusions in perspective, imagine Boris Johnson declaring that the Great English nation includes the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, based on their common history.
Actually, the supposed historic, linguistic, cultural, political and religious unity of the Eastern Slavs that Putin describes has always been nothing but a stepping stone of Russian imperial aspirations. Throughout the 19th century Russia proclaimed itself the protector of Slavs and Orthodox Christians living under the Ottoman rule. Its real aim, meanwhile, was to keep chopping off Turkish possessions.
Russia’s expansionist goals during World War I included getting its hands on Turkish territories populated by Greeks and Armenians in Anatolia and around the Straits, as well as Austrian and Hungarian territories inhabited by Slavic-speaking populations.
Those plans came to nothing because of Lenin’s revolution, but how grateful those people would have been to Russia for absorbing them into its empire can be gleaned from the example of Bulgaria. In 1877 Russia went to war with Turkey on the pretext of coming to the assistance of its oppressed Bulgarian subjects. The result was the establishment of an independent Bulgarian principality. There were also numerous historic, linguistic and religious ties between Russia and Bulgaria, but the Bulgarian state promptly changed allegiance and fought against Russia in both World Wars.
Another Slavic nation, Serbia, while often seeking Russian help, always maintained a careful distance with its Big Brother. And there is no need to list the number of times the Poles revolted against Russian domination.
The only two Slavic nations that seemed to be on good terms with Russia were Czechs and Slovaks — but that was only because they were ruled by the Austrians and the Hungarians, respectively. And that too changed after World War II and, especially, after 1968. It’s hard to imagine Czech artist Alphonse Mucha painting anything like his Slav Epic series after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Thus, pan-Slavism, just like the three branches of the Great Russian nation, has always been pure fiction, the figment of the Russian imagination. After the Soviet empire in Europe and then the Soviet Union itself collapsed, most of its subject nations, Slavic and not, hastened to flee its embrace. None show any inclination to return. The only ones that remained loyal or even friendly to Moscow are the poorest of the lot and, not coincidentally, ruled by oppressive and corrupt leaders not dissimilar to Putin himself.
The list of such nations until recently included Ukraine. Now that it too has shown determination to flee Russian clutches, Russia wants to put an end to Ukraine’s independence. Putin’s article is no mere embarrassing musings of a grumpy grandpa, but a call to arms, like that song about Finland was 80 years ago. Defense minister Sergei Shoigu has made the article required reading for ideological and political indoctrination of Russian military officers and the troops.
There is little doubt that Ukraine will remain a separate nation. But its status will continue to be challenged by Moscow, on the ideological front as well as on the battlefield. This is why Ukraine needs to be incorporated into the liberal democracy of the Western world, the way so many other former Soviet satellites have been. It needs to join NATO and become a member of The European Union — and to work tirelessly to strengthen both those institutions.
