Alexander Motyl in his op-ed In Kyiv Post took notice of
Mearshimer’s article (“The Ukraine crisis according to John Mearshimer —
impeccable logic, wrong facts” (Oct. 31).
The titles speak for themselves in both articles. But something
other than a political science shootout sticks out like a sore thumb. Maybe one
needs to be a geography fiend to notice it.
Or perhaps knowledge of history
should be sufficient to see this wrinkle. Here is the problem: Napoleon’s army
never touched “the flat land” of Ukraine on his way to Moscow.
Or perhaps one would
need to know only some of the world’s
history and some geography
— excuse me, a combination not often
found among America’s university graduates and not always among the professors.
Although Mearshiner’s mistake is not quite as disastrous as
was Napoleon’s miscalculation, it shows that Ukraine and Russia are not
professor’s strong points.
Without rubbing it in too much, might as well mention that Germany’s
military advance into Russia in World War I went through Poland and what is now
the Baltic states, and not through Ukraine. German troops went into Ukraine
after Germany signed a peace treaty with Russia at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March
1918 and recognized Ukraine’s independence, declared on 22 January 1918. The
Soviet Russia was compelled to withdraw it invading army from Ukraine.
Apparently these events never happened per John Mearshiner’s catalogue.
Another shiner in Mearshiner’s perception of Ukraine is
dismissive wording. Flat land. Is he not aware that people actually live in
that land? The people who can have own government and the right to independence
for their country? If he is really sensitive to “reality”, as he claims to be,
maybe the kind of reality coming to mind is one defined by Georg W. Hegel: “Reality
is what exists inside one’s head”.
Boners in geography usually go hand-in-hand with fuzzy
awareness of history and with preconceived notions. Ukraine as it stands today, in war against
Russia, is not “the West’s fault”. And it is not a result of Western ingenuity.
It is simply an outcome of the desire of the Ukrainian people to be masters of
their fate — as the country is
defending itself against Russia’s aggression. This aggression is obscured by
words such as “Ukraine crisis”. There would be no crisis if Putin withdrew his
elite troops and mercenaries from Donbas.
Defense of Ukraine is now in the form of a shooting war
imposed by Russia. But the conflict was always there, even when Ukraine was
part of Russia’s empire in either the Tsarist or Soviet format.
In the darkest days in the last 300 years, the resistance
took various forms, virtually unknown outside the borders. For instance, it
lived in peasants’ uprisings, with memories in folk songs, such as one about
Ustym Karmeliuk, leader of an insurrection in the early 19th
century. In words with loose translation: “The sun from Siberia rises, wake up
from slumber you must, Karmeliuk will honor your trust”. This makes a reference
to Siberian exile, long before gulag time.
In the days of the 1917 revolution and the Ukrainian
National Republic that lasted 3 years new songs emerged, about the partisans:
“At the grassy knoll in the steppe, in the grave lies alone Maxym Zalizniak,
commander- partisan. He led his unit to Kyiv from Kherson. He fell in a fight,
but his soldiers went on”. This song was later highjacked by Soviet scribes
with somewhat altered words.
Why this heritage matters? It is because it seeded the roots
of modern Ukrainian literature in the 19th century and the revival
of national consciousness. Ukraine’s enemies called it nationalism. It closely
lined up with Europe’s “Spring of the
nations” in the 1850s and became anathema for Moscow.
Militant Ukrainian nationalism emerged in the 1930s and 1940s
with the formation of the OUN and the UPA (the Ukrainian Insurgent Army). Without
it, Ukraine’s history during World War II would have been a blank page. The UPA
is maligned to this day as extremist by
you know whom. Is it paradoxical that its successors became front-line
defenders of democracy in Ukraine in the last 20 years? Not if you think it through.
Legendary is the jingoism of Russian imperialism, as it is
in Chechnia and more recently in Donbas. On the other hand, recall who in the
West (not in Germany) wrote famously in the 20th century: “May my
country be always right. But it is my country right or wrong”. Which goes to
show that patriotism and the labels of nationalism and extremism are easy
subjects for political manipulation and prevarication.
Today’s independent Ukraine is embraced by most Ukrainians
no matter what language they speak, as witnessed in the recent presidential and
parliamentary elections. The fighters of
the Right Sector who tipped the outcome at Maidan last winter were mostly Russian
speakers, and so are many in today’s volunteer battalions. And yet, when Putin
without blinking an eye is lying that he is protecting Russian speakers in
Ukraine, some in the West prefer to take his words at face value or repeat his
phraseology as “easy to comprehend.”
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
