Ukraine Is as Real as It Gets

The real history of a fake country where real people are defending their homeland

Let’s get a couple of cards out on the table.

Half of my family, heritage, and roots are in western Ukraine. I grew up hearing my grandparents speak the language, with the smell of the food and the flowery red-orange-white decor (colors often present in Ukraine on Easter eggs, traditional dress, tablecloths and other decorations) all around their house. I’ve been to mass at Ukrainian Catholic churches, attended cultural festivals, spent time with an American chapter of Plast (imagine Ukrainian Scouts who really like boats), and have always enjoyed learning about the country’s history. Additionally, I still have extended family in western Ukraine (they’re safe).

I will always be an American first and am suspicious of the potential political mobilization inherent in hyphenated American sectarianism. And none of the above gives me special purchase or expertise on the situation. But I cannot help maintaining sympathy for Ukraine as a country and its struggle to emerge from its complicated history as a stable and functioning polity.

Thus, I want the current Russian military mission to fail.

It’s wrong, counterproductive, and has already led to untold numbers of innocent deaths, even with the Russian military exercising caution. Funny that people are noting the mission’s slow and careful pace. But isn’t this precisely what will bog it down? If victory requires a level of brutality you’re unwilling to use, doesn’t this call the mission into question? It deserves to be repudiated and I’m glad the U.S. and Europe are providing humanitarian and material assistance.

However—Stay With Me, I Have Another Card up My Sleeve.

I’m married to someone from the Russian diaspora of another former Soviet republic. Therefore, I also have friends and family in Russia and of Russian descent elsewhere in the former USSR. I’ve been to Moscow and St. Petersburg and have only had positive personal experiences with the Russians. The current war is not their fault, and holding them or any other normal, everyday Russian responsible is morally obnoxious in the extreme. There must be no reprisals against ethnic Russians in the United States or elsewhere purely on the basis of them being Russian. You don’t choose your heritage.

The anti-Russian bile being conjured up on social media was long since planted in the American professional class through the insane delusion of Russiagate and was primed over the last couple years of hysteria around COVID and other issues. I’m not impressed by your flag emojis, your hashtags, or your sudden spurts of solidarity with people you’d forgotten after Trump’s first impeachment. Ukraine is not about you, or your sick desire to feed your own narcissism. 

I especially hate this oiling of the machine because of what it’s making people say. “We need a no-fly zone!” Are you out of your mind? Do you understand what that would mean? I know you’re #stillwith your girl Hillary, but it was ludicrous when she proposed it for Syria and it’s equally crazy now. I don’t appreciate this sudden reflexive targeting of social mania that’s just finished with COVID and is ready to steamroll us toward a nuclear catastrophe.

On the other hand, I deeply resent the reflexive attitude of the “based” right-wing dissidents who are leveraging the conflict to burnish their personal brands. “But Putin is the only one standing in the way of anti-white, anti-Christian, globohomo neoliberal hegemony!” You do realize that multiple semi-autonomous nonwhite ethnic republics exist within the Russian Federation, don’t you?

And since so many of you love to claim Ukraine is a “fake country, LOL” and is really just an extension of Russia, how can you be happy with the killing of the same people you claim to admire so much? Additionally, Hungary has been able to maintain membership in the EU while bucking some of the recent social shifts elsewhere in the West. What makes you think Ukraine couldn’t do the same?

I want to address the “fake country” assertion head-on for a moment. You people sound like leftist idiots who bleat on about everything being “just a social construct.” Every country is “fake” until enough people on Earth agree that it’s real, that its borders exist, and that its sovereignty is legitimate. That has been the case in Ukraine since 1991. “But that’s so recent!” So what? If you were alive in 1952, would you similarly scoff at the idea of Irish independence? Unless you want the world in a permanent state of war, we must be able to draw lines somewhere.

Ireland’s origins as a unitary state can be traced back to the time of the High Kings, some of which are legendary, others historical. For the historical kings of the 800s, their level of authority in Ireland versus those of petty kings is a subject of some debate. Regardless, Ireland can be viewed as part of a greater Celtic world with its own language, historical legends, myths, and traditions that inform the nationalism that sets it at odds with its Norman and Anglo-Saxon overlords. Catholicism would play a substantial role as well, especially after the Reformation.

The fates of these peoples diverged with the Anglo-Saxon and Viking/Norman conquests, with Ireland’s capital of Dublin founded by Vikings in the 800s. Ireland would later be fully absorbed into the British imperial order in the 1600s, after the downfall of Confederate Ireland in the 1640s. Ireland would gain independence in the early 1920s—with the exception of a portion of Ulster, which contained a population that identified more with Britain and just so happened to house an important industrial and port city in Belfast. Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.

Ukraine’s origins can be traced back to the city of Kyiv and its place as part of the Slavic world and that of the Norse expeditions emanating from Scandinavia. Some of its aspects and traditions are shared with the rest of the Slavic world, while others are unique to Ukraine. Again, some of this is legendary, some of it historical, with the actual founding of the Kievan Rus kingdom dating to the establishment of a Varangian Viking holding in the 800s. Indeed, the Kievan Rus forms the founding basis for both Russia and Ukraine, with different branches of the Rurik dynasty being ascendant at different points in time.

The fates of this family and the lands they ruled would diverge with the Mongol conquests, with the Ukrainian lands falling under the dominion of the Golden Horde, Poland-Lithuania, and the Hapsburg empires. This culminated in the Cossack Hetmanate’s brief period of autonomy in central Ukraine in the 1640s, which effectively ended with the union with Moscow as a way to gain security from Poland. Ukrainian nationalism would thus have two schools that emerged, one within central Ukraine around Kyiv, and the other in Galicia-Volhynia in the west. Part of the divergence is the strong Catholicism in the west.

The country made an abortive attempt at independence in the early 1920s before the state collapsed. Following that the Ukrainian communist movement allied with the Bolsheviks and Ukraine became part of the USSR. Western Ukraine remained part of Poland until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and was then absorbed into the bloblike state drawn up as the Ukrainian SSR. Inconveniently for its future prospects, it had portions of land less traditionally tied to Ukrainian identity attached to it, including an industrial area in the Donbas and the important southern port city of Sevastopol within the Crimea.

It should be noted that “Ukrainization,”—being the promotion of Ukrainian culture, customs, and language—waxed and waned under the Soviet Union depending on Moscow’s political imperatives. Even Stalin promoted Ukrainization in the earlier part of his tenure, before the grain situation got complicated. You know, famines and all that jazz. (Hey, you know who else had a historically significant famine?)

Some may posit that the whole notion of Ukrainian culture and identity had to be enforced to be made real. But keep in mind that the authorities would need something to work with in the first place. The Soviets were very inventive propagandists, yes, but they didn’t simply invent the Ukrainian language, dress, folklore, and Taras Shevchenko out of whole cloth.

“So, if the Kievan Rus is the origin point for both countries, shouldn’t they be united as a single state today?” Only if you think France, the Low Countries, Germany, and northern Italy should be reconstituted as a singular Carolingian state. “But Ukrainians and Russians are so similar ethnically, why should they be separate nations?” Again, I would direct your attention to Austria and Germany. What? You want Anschluss in 2022?

Of course, there are key differences between Ireland and Ukraine, or Austria and Ukraine, or any other potential comparisons. But a lot of these similarities are worth discussing when it comes to nationhood and legitimacy. Why grant legitimacy to one while scoffing at the other? Is there some key element that sets Ukraine’s status apart? Or is this all a misdirection of your hatred for your own country, or perhaps yourself?

Finally, Let’s Address the Question of Russian National Interests.

To an extent, Russia was right to feel betrayed and humiliated by the West. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the brilliant minds leading the U.S, decided that shock therapy was the appropriate treatment for the former Soviet republics, an approach that sent them spiraling into chaos. We continued to treat Russia as a potential adversary through NATO expansion, failing to take their concerns seriously. 

I’ve seen a lot of people say, “Doesn’t Putin have a point in all this?” Yes. But guess what? He already made that point. In 2014, in seizing Crimea. Without firing a shot. 

Russia reclaimed the Crimea, thus asserting its strategic interests in the region and maintaining its Black Sea fleet. This also gave the Russian-speaking and identifying population there a place to go. Imagine, Putin could have ended his tenure with a legacy of reclaiming land for Russia and preserving its naval position, with close to zero Ukrainians, Russians, or Tatars having to die for it (although more than 13,000 were killed in the subsequent war in Donbas).

But here we are. So what’s my ideal solution? First of all, who cares? Second of all, I think Ukraine would be a more functional, cohesive, and manageable state with Crimea cut loose and with a special demilitarized status granted to the eastern breakaway regions. It should not join NATO. It should join the European Union with caution and most certainly not seek to join the eurozone.

It should be able to maintain a modern, well-equipped military, but have no missile systems that could be used to target Rostov, Kursk, and other Russian cities. Moreover, it should maintain good relations with Russia akin to those between Germany and Austria. But Austria is governed from Vienna, not Berlin. Thirty-one years on, we should allow for Ukraine to be governed from Kyiv, not Moscow.

I hope you find some of these reflections useful as you watch events play out. I’m not a fanatic or a zealot and I hate the propaganda orgy that never seems to end. But my feelings are still clear. Putin’s government is at fault, and we should hope for this war to end soon.

A version of this essay was originally published at the Substack The Cynical Optimist under the title “Thinking About Ukraine” by Mark Alastor, the pen name of a freelance writer whose writing has also appeared at Splice Today.