Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
Putin Calls Ukrainian Statehood a Fiction. History
Suggests Otherwise. (1/2)
The New York Times
Michael Schwirtz, Maria Varenikova and Rick Gladstone
Tue, February 22, 2022, 11:03 AM
KYIV, Ukraine — In his speech to the Russian nation on Monday, President Vladimir Putin buoyed his case for codifying the cleavage of two rebel territories from Ukraine by arguing that the very idea of Ukrainian statehood was a fiction.
With a conviction of an authoritarian unburdened by historical nuance, Putin declared Ukraine an invention of Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, who he said had mistakenly endowed Ukraine with a sense of statehood by allowing it autonomy within the newly created Soviet state.
“Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia,” Putin said. “This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution, and moreover Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory.”
As a misreading of history, it was extreme even by the standards of Putin, a former KGB officer who has declared the Soviet Union’s collapse the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
But the historical reality of Ukraine is complicated, a thousand-year history of changing religions, borders and peoples. The capital, Kyiv, was established hundreds of years before Moscow, and both Russians and Ukrainians claim it as a birthplace of their modern cultures, religion and language.
Kyiv was ideally situated along the trade routes that developed in the ninth and 10th centuries, and flourished only to see its economic influence diminish as trade shifted elsewhere. The many conquests by warring factions and Ukraine’s diverse geography — with farmland, forests and a maritime environment on the Black Sea — created a complex fabric of multiethnic states.
The history and culture of Russia and Ukraine are indeed intertwined — they share the same Orthodox Christian religion, and their languages, customs and national cuisines are related.
Even so, Ukrainian identity politics and nationalism have been irritants in Russia since the feudal czarist times that predated the Russian Revolution. Ukraine is seen by many Russians as their nation’s “little brother” and should behave accordingly.
Eastern Ukraine, which came under Russian influence much earlier than the west, still features many Russian speakers and people loyal to Moscow. But the happy brotherhood of nations that Putin likes to paint, with Ukraine fitted snugly into the fabric of a greater Russia, is dubious.
Parts of modern-day Ukraine did indeed reside for centuries within the Russian empire. But other parts in the west fell under the jurisdiction of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Poland or Lithuania.
“Putin’s argument today that Ukraine is historically subsumed by Russia is just not right,” said Cliff Kupchan, chair of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting organization. While the themes of Putin’s speech were not new for the Russian leader, Kupchan said, “the breadth and vehemence with which he went after all things Ukrainian was remarkable.”
The newly created Soviet government under Lenin that drew so much of Putin’s scorn on Monday would eventually crush the nascent independent Ukrainian state. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was banished from schools and its culture was permitted to exist only as a cartoonish caricature of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants.
Putin also argued on Monday that the myth of Ukraine was reinforced by the crumbling Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev, which allowed Ukraine to slip free of Moscow’s grasp. It was a weakened Moscow that “gave” Ukraine the right to become independent of the Soviet Union “without any terms and conditions.”
“This is just madness,” he said.
It was not Moscow that granted Ukraine’s independence in 1991, but the Ukrainian people, who voted resoundingly to leave the Soviet Union in a democratic referendum.
(to be continued)
Translation
烏克蘭基輔 - 總統普京(Vladimir
Putin)週一在對俄羅斯國家的講話中, 把他支持將兩個反叛領土與烏克蘭分裂編纂成法理的，他辯稱烏克蘭建國的想法本身就是一種虛構。
普京堅信獨裁者不受歷史的干擾阻，他宣布烏克蘭是布爾什維克革命領袖列寧(Vladimir Lenin) 作出來的，說他錯誤地賦予了烏克蘭一種國家意識，允許它在新成立的蘇聯國家內自治。
普京說: “現代烏克蘭完全是由俄羅斯創造的，更具體地說是布爾什維克共產主義俄羅斯”; “這個過程實際上是在 1917 年革命之後立即開始的，而且列寧和他的同夥在處理俄羅斯時採取了最草率的方式 - 分裂、撕毀她自己的歷史領土” 。
對歷史的一個誤讀，即使以普京的標準來看，這也是極端的 - 他作為前國家安全委員會 (蘇聯)官員宣布蘇聯解體是 20 世紀最大的地緣政治災難。
烏克蘭和俄羅斯的淵源可以追溯到第一個斯拉夫國家 Kievan Rus，這是一個由維京人在 9 世紀建立的中世紀帝國。
但烏克蘭的歷史現實是複雜的，在宗教、邊界和民族的變化有一千年的歷史。首都基輔比莫斯科早幾百年建立，俄羅斯人和烏克蘭人都聲稱它是他們現代文化、宗教和語言的發源地。
基輔有利地位於 9 世紀和 10 世紀發展起來的貿易路線的沿線，並且隨著貿易轉移到其他地方，基輔的經濟影響力逐漸減弱。由於交戰派系的多次征服,和烏克蘭多樣化的地理環境 - 在黑海擁有農田、森林和海洋環境 - 創造了一個多民族國家的複雜結構。
俄羅斯和烏克蘭的歷史和文化確實是交織在一起的 - 他們有著共同的東正教; 他們的語言、習俗和民族美食都有相連。
即便如此，自俄羅斯革命之前的封建沙皇時代以來，烏克蘭的身份政治和民族主義一直使俄羅斯感到煩擾。烏克蘭被許多俄羅斯人視為他們國家的 “小兄弟” ，應該表現與身份相應的舉止。
烏克蘭東部比西部更早地受到俄羅斯的影響，仍然有許多講俄語的人和忠於莫斯科的人。但普京喜歡構画的國家幸福兄弟情誼，即烏克蘭緊貼在更大的俄羅斯的結構中，是值得怀疑的。
現代烏克蘭的部分地區確實曾置身於俄羅斯帝國境內幾個世紀。但西部其他地區則歸奧匈帝國、波蘭或立陶宛管轄。
一個叫歐亞集團的政治風險諮詢組織的主席 Cliff Kupchan 說: “今天普京關於烏克蘭歷史上被歸入俄羅斯的論點是不正確的”。雖然演講的主題對普京這位俄羅斯領導人來說並不新鮮，但Kupchan說，“他對烏克蘭所有事情的追求的廣度和熱情是異乎尋常” 。
在周一引起了普京的極大蔑視的列寧領導下的新成立蘇維埃政府，最終將粉碎新生的獨立烏克蘭國家。在蘇聯時代，烏克蘭語被學校放逐，其文化只被允許以穿著蓬鬆褲子跳舞的哥薩克人在卡通漫畫形式存在。
普京周一還辯稱，烏克蘭的神話被戈爾巴喬夫（Mikhail Gorbachev）的垮台蘇聯政府強化了，讓烏克蘭擺脫了莫斯科的控制。是一個弱勢的莫斯科“賦予” 烏克蘭權利 “在沒有任何條款和條件” 獨立於蘇聯。
他說: “這簡直是瘋狂” 。
在 1991 年不是莫斯科授予烏克蘭獨立，而是烏克蘭人民在民主公投中強烈投票決定離開蘇聯。
(to be continued)
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