A History of Eastern Europe: Ukraine-Russia Crisis

in 2014 ukraine erupts into crisis which unfolds on many levels first in kiev when massive protests in the streets lead to the fall of the government and the escape of the ousted president viktor yanukovych then the situation turns into an international crisis as vladimir putin of russia moves in special forces in uniforms without emblems and a nexus crimea a region of ukraine on the black sea fighting breaks out in eastern ukraine between the ukrainian army and rebels supported by russia and in july a malaysian airliner is shot down as it crosses eastern ukraine with all passengers and crew killed a succession of ceasefires are brokered and then broken several million become refugees and the fate of a nation hangs in the balance after the collapse of the soviet union many experts warned of ethnic violence on a mass scale in the former soviet union but it did not occur so why now for decades after world war ii the violent changing of borders had been considered a taboo in europe given the cascade of turmoil that would follow the prospect largely became unthinkable with the tragic exception of the former yugoslavia so 2014 was in a sense a pivotal year as eastern europe again saw borders altered by violence and the threat of force as part of ukraine crimea was annexed by russia and putin announcing that ukraine as a whole was a failed state sent his forces into eastern ukraine and yet the tinder for this explosion didn't just spontaneously come into being in 2014. in fact neither did the larger emergency about the recent difficult post-soviet politics of transition over the last two or three two to three decades rather the background to this crisis is a slow-motion identity crisis involving both ukraine and russia and extending back over centuries it has often been noted by scholars that russia without ukraine is a country but russia with ukraine is an empire so one question that arises is what sort of russia comes into being if it chooses an imperial identity with an appetite for expansion that threatens its neighbors or if on the contrary russia chooses a self-sufficient identity that meshes with modern europe today for ukrainians their identities are both linked to those of a past shared with russia but also with historic ties and affinities with the west ukraine is marked by a diversity of historical memories and orientations and in that sense it's like a microcosm of larger eastern european patterns that we've been exploring in this course but with one big difference while many attributes of eastern europe's history derived from the challenges that face smaller countries and ethnic groups when they confront bigger outside imperial powers ukraine is different in its sheer size after russia ukraine is the second largest country in europe and it's the largest country located entirely inside europe ukraine is the size of texas with a population of 45 million it became famous as the bread basket of europe because of its tremendously fertile black soil the chernozem from that rich earth spring up amber waves of grain and also fields of sunflowers in this sense the flag of independent ukraine blue over yellow is in fact a literal rendering of the landscape idyllic sky overproductive acres it also suggests the level flat geography that has shaped ukrainian history as a contested area whose very name means borderland the tides of history also carved out divides in ukraine that still persist today after the golden age of the roos centered on kiev the mongol invaders swept in after a time of predominance the mongols areas of control shrank leaving the tartars of crimea as their descendants then poland and lithuania moved in as well they left an imprint on the society and politics of ukraine while also endorsing the creation of a ukrainian union church orthodox and tradition but bound to the roman catholic church ukrainian nobles assimilated to the manners of the polish elite beyond the areas of foreign control lay the wild realm of the ukrainian cossacks those free fighters who escaped feudal regimes in order to live entirely by their own independent code like the american cowboys cossacks became famous for their horsemanship their fighting skills and their rough and tumble independent ways so it's little wonder that later ukrainian romantics idolize the cossacks and these mythologized heroes even show up in ukraine's national anthem wedged between the powers of poland lithuania to the west and russia in the east the cossacks maintained a balance between those powers until they could do so no longer and had to choose one or another side for an alliance in 1654 the cossack warlord bolton mitsuki who had led an uprising against poland and sought to create an independent state for the cossacks signed a treaty with russia at pereaslav historians have been arguing ever since for centuries after about that treaty's true meaning khmenitsky received in this treaty the tsar's protection along with russian promises for ukrainian autonomy instead of getting an ally who would defend their existence however the cossacks discovered that they now had a set of new rulers because in 1667 soon afterwards poland and russia came to an agreement among themselves for partition they divided the contested ukrainian lands along the nyeper river throughout this course we've seen again and again that recurring phenomenon of partitions in eastern europe and stubborn resistance against them this partition was eventually made moot by the decline of one of the partners poland lithuania and its division by other great powers for ukraine the final end of poland lithuania by 1795 meant that most ukrainians were now in the russian empire with one exception the proud province of galicia in the west actually fell to austrian rule under the hopsburgs so here a new west versus east contrast emerged in ukrainian history in the areas under the russian empire policymakers assumed that the slavic populations or little russians as they called them would eventually melt into russian culture a greater whole the empress catherine the great labeled the regions that she had won near the black sea novoracia new russia a name which clearly pointed to the intended future of a unified expanded russian imperial identity ukrainian language was banned books outlawed and nationalist intellectuals persecuted but by contrast in the west in the austrian empire where the state had to play a complicated game of balancing ethnic groups off against one another ukrainians or ruthings as they were formerly called were actually able to cultivate a modern national identity literature and culture we've noted how the end of world war one brought some attempts at ukrainian independence but these failed between the world wars ukrainians again found themselves divided by borders most living in the soviet union others in poland romania and czechoslovakia inside the soviet union as we saw stalin cracked down on ukrainian cultural leaders and brought mass death with the terror famine or holodomor of the 1930s with the coming of the second world war some ukrainian nationalists hoped that nazi germany might help their cause among their leaders was stefan bandera before the war in poland bandera was active in the organization of ukrainian nationalists which waged a campaign of assassinations against polish officials at the start of the second world war ukraine some ukrainian nationalists allied with nazi germany and some participated in the nazi campaigns against the jews but as ukrainian hopes for independence were frustrated relations deteriorated and the nazis arrested and imprisoned bandera a new force called the ukrainian insurgent army or upa arose opposed to the nazis and soviets and it violently aimed to ethnically cleanse poles from the areas that they claimed killing tens of thousands by the war's end a strange hidden three-sided conflict was roaring in these regions between banderas ukrainian nationalist guerrillas polish underground fighters and soviet partisans in a previous lecture we noted how towards the end of the second world war borders and populations were shifted in eastern europe ukraine saw key examples of this stalin deported all the crimean tatars from their homes expelling them overnight poland shifted westward ethnic poles were evicted from ancestral homes and the city of became levive in ukrainian in western ukraine by the end of this process ukraine's borders included most ukrainians for the first time in centuries but all of them under moscow's rigid control the second world war had uprooted many and this contributed to a vast diaspora of ukrainians around the world but especially in the united states and in canada they number in the millions due to repeated waves of immigration or escape since the 19th century marina levitzka's 2005 novel a short history of tractors in ukrainian is a most engaging comic novel that depicts all the complexities of successive waves of immigrants from ukraine coming to britain and their interactions with each other and with their new home and i recommend this book most highly within ukraine partisan warfare continued into the 1950s as in the baltics the guerrilla leader bandera remained in germany where he was hunted down by the kgb and assassinated in munich in 1959 a final change of borders was then affected by stalin's successor nikita khrushchev who had actually been a top party official in ukraine before and after the war to celebrate the successes of the soviet union and to mark one particular ancient event three centuries before in 1954 khrushchev officially gave crimea to the republic of ukraine the old anniversary that was being marked was the 1654 treaty of pediaslav between russia and the cossacks now given the fact that all the republics in the soviet union were in fact ruled from moscow the border change didn't seem at the time anything more than a formality but it ended up ringing down to our times below the surface of soviet life even as ukraine's formal existence was written into the state structure russification still preceded a pace in eastern ukraine a large part of the population were russian speakers even if they identified themselves as ukrainians in the country at large bilingualism was common because russian held pride of place as the language of international brotherhood in the soviet union about a quarter of people in ukraine today identify russian as their mother tongue especially in the east dissident voices in the soviet period were strongest in the western parts of ukraine because of its different history these were the parts that had been sovietized more recently and remembered a different non-soviet past in the period of glasnost and gorbachev's reforms the dissident rook movement which was the people's movement of ukraine championed ukrainian identity in ways that were similar to the independence movements in the baltics at the time protests were sparked by the chernobyl disaster and how the state hid its impact so environmental protests grew the banned uniate church also resurfaced after being underground for decades towards the end of the soviet period even ukrainian communist officials endorsed independent statehood with the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 ukraine became independent in a referendum on the question over 90 percent of voters were in favor of independence however in what followed the newly independent ukraine revealed yet more complexities along with russia and belarus ukraine was one of the founding members of the cis the commonwealth of independent states yet many ukrainian leaders avowed that they wanted to be part of an eastern european return to europe as well which would mean orienting themselves and ukraine towards the west and its institutions how could these commitments be combined at the same time the population of independent ukraine was diverse including ukrainian-speaking ukrainian ukrainians ukrainian-speaking russian ethnic russians jews and crimean tatars who had migrated back to the homeland that stalin had once evicted them from several competing branches of the orthodox church also claimed the loyalties of people of that faith at the same time both the state and economy were in bad condition the slow and very fitful economic transition favored those who were well connected so soon a class of powerful oligarchs rose up and these super rich founded political parties of their own as sort of personal vehicles for advancement bribery was an integral part of a an entire shadow economy that actually carried over from soviet times in the year 2000 secret recordings allegedly captured the president leonid kuchma's voice as he ordered his entourage to deal with a troublesome muckraking journalist and soon after the journalist in question giorgi gongadze was later found dead corruption at multiple levels of government ate away at ordinary people's confidence in the system and economic productivity lagged ukraine found itself hugely dependent on russia for energy supplies some 75 percent of its gas and 80 percent of oil supplies to overcome its troubles ukraine sought international financial aid to prepare for reforms and giving up its big nuclear stockpile left over from the soviet era in 1994 helped win them some international assistance over time disappointment with insider politics as usual produced a popular movement called the orange revolution in ukraine in 2004. this was prompted by disgust with the cynical manipulations of elites especially one in particular the ukrainian opposition to the government was led by viktor yushchenko earlier an economist and head of the central bank in ukraine as candidate for the presidency his coalition promised to fight corruption bring uk ukraine closer to the west and to set the country on a new course but then on september 5th 2004 yushenko went to dinner with the deputy head of the ukrainian intelligence service later that evening yushenko became desperately ill medical tests showed dioxin poisoning symptoms and the symptoms indeed were visible on his bloated pockmarked face who had done it several suspects fled to russia and could not be questioned was the intention to kill him outright and remove him from the presidential campaign or was the intention merely to disfigure him in his outward appearance and thus scuttle his chances for election whatever the case it backfired when the government announced fraudulent election returns people took to the streets they chose that vivid color orange to rally people to their cause and flags and shirts and they kept protesting even in that bitter winter cold out in the streets one in every five ukrainians went out in protest in the orange revolution but there were contrasts there was that divide between east and west one in three people in the west protested but fewer than one in 20 in the eastern part of the country in the capital kiev the demonstrations rocked the city's independence square the so-called maidan nezalesnosti over 17 days the protesters finally won and in a new election that was held yushenko became president yet what followed was a disappointment and that still puzzles experts trying to understand why this was rather than making common cause those who had loudly championed reform instead got bogged down in struggles against one another there was little sense of progress being made capitalizing on people's frustration radical ukrainian nationalist groups some of whom celebrated step on bandera as a hero started to gain more support then in 2010 viktor yanukovych was elected president with most of his support based in the eastern regions and also with the support of russia's leader vladimir putin yanukovych told nato that ukraine which had been considering membership before was not interested in membership and indeed the population was very ambivalent yanukovych also jailed his opponent yulia timoshenko a co-leader of the orange revolution and a former prime minister accusing her of corruption in office at the end of 2013 when yanukovych bizarrely first negotiated and then refused to sign an association agreement with the european union again mass protests erupted in kiev leave and other cities centered once again on kiev's maidan these protests in the coldest winter came to be popularly called the euromaidan or euro square protests government forces tried to quell the portrait of the protests so-called berkut officers were specially charged with crushing demonstrations the berkut were forces like the zomo police had been in poland or the oman special forces in the soviet union in the suppression of the protests dozens of protesters were killed but by february 2014 president yanukovych felt that his power was crumbling and he fled finding refuge in russia there then followed strange scenes as hundreds of thousands of protesters now wandered around in yanukovych's vast estate near kiev an estate which showcased the wealth of an oligarch at its most ostentatious and outrageous the grand mansion had been built in a rambling and eclectic bombastic style that locals started calling donetsk rococo after yanukovych's hometown donetsk the mansion was set on a larger territory of 350 acres it was surrounded by a private zoo of exotic birds and deer tennis courts a helicopter pad and winding landscaped gardens with pillared pavilions and pleasure domes at this point the entire complex was declared to be the property of the state and plans were elaborated for using it as a museum of corruption but then questions of the ownership of the estate got bogged down illegal complications in the courts emblematic of the whole tangled processes of government in ukraine even after the overthrow of yanukovych also emblematic of problems and confusion was a mystery that surrounded some of the loot that was on display there persistent rumors insisted that among yanukovych's many toys was a loaf of bread made of gold but it disappeared in the looting and tramping through the palace and now officials claim that it never really existed at all putin who had been yanukovych's patron declared his ouster and the change of government in kiev illegitimate russian media denounced the protesters as neo-fascists and nazis they called them banderozzi recalling world war ii and the guerrilla leader step on bandera russian forces moved into crimea at first the russian government denied that it had sent troops into the region which had an ethnic russian majority the troops that arrived there were joculy referred to as little green men noah knew where they were from perhaps from mars they brought they bore no insignia on their uniforms but they did wear masks russia then annexed crimea officially over international protests news reports suggested that inhabitants of crimea who opposed the annexation have faced violence and crimean tartars who make up some 15 percent of the population are anxious about their own fate in their own homeland once again later in march of 2015 putin proudly admitted openly what his government had earlier denied that he had masterminded the annexation of crimea from the start it was not a spontaneous response to calls for help from locals but a plan and the annexation in fact had been ordered weeks before the referendum was staged under the watchful eyes of gunmen next heavily armed rebels many again wearing masks started seizing territories in eastern ukraine along the russian border and declaring many republics under their control they were self-appointed administrators of this region and one observer memorably labeled this the republic of random dudes russian media referred to the territories by a new name or rather revived an old name these were called novoracia or new russia precisely the name given to our next lands by catherine the great in july 2014 malaysia airlines flight 17 was shot down as it crossed over eastern ukraine near the border with russia the plane had been bound from amsterdam to kuala lumpur and all 298 people on board perished rebels at first did not allow international investigators to the crash site as fighting continued russian officials insisted that none of their soldiers were in ukraine but when russian prisoners were taken it was announced that in fact they were soldiers on vacation who could do what they wished in their own free time however the russian government went on to declare that the deaths of russian soldiers during peacetime were a state secret which opened to prosecution by the state anyone who reported on funerals back in russia of men killed in ukraine communal conflict also blazed up in areas with mixed populations a particularly dreadful incident took place in the famed port city of odessa with about 30 russian population in may of 2014 pro-russian and pro-ukrainian protesters clashed and molotov cocktails were thrown leading to the deaths of about 42 most of them of the pro-russian group a full investigation was promised by the ukrainian government but was badly managed so the event still remains unclear by 2015 in spite of ceasefires negotiated in minsk in belarus and then broken before the ink was dry the fighting had already taken some 5 000 lives and had turned upwards of a million people into refugees civilians living on the front lines were subjected to shelling mortar attacks and cross fire a whole zone of the country now was dominated by a state of undeclared war and the question presented itself whether one wanted it to or not is this the new normal in europe back in 2008 vladimir putin reportedly told a startled president george w bush during a summit meeting that ukraine is not really a country as the crisis unfolded in 2014 the president of the european commission called putin in august to seek some resolution to the crisis putin's reported reply was that he could occupy kiev in two weeks the background to this perspective was putin's declaration that the soviet union's collapse was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century the cultural and educational policies of putin's regime have praised the soviet union and revived its symbolism and vocabulary the biting irony here is that in fact russians had been victimized by that system longest living under its control longer than other peoples absorbed later in eastern europe in that sense this represents a hangover from the end of soviet empire and communism yet putin's policies led to a surge in his popularity back home a deliberate manipulation of news and media sought to sway public opinion in russia and abroad tv in russia aired interviews telling of atrocities one woman claimed that ukrainians had crucified the infant son of a rebel it was later learned that she was the wife of a berkut officer involved in suppressing protests and the story was never confirmed nor retracted polemics surrounded the shooting down of the malaysian airliner including claims that everyone on board had been dead already and that the incident was a western provocation putin's government argued that its intervention was motivated only by concerns for order in ukraine which had become a failed state here were fascinating historical echoes from all the way back to the late 1700s when the great powers had justified carving up the state of poland lithuania with precisely the same claims one unspoken reality was that in fact disorder was encouraged by the outside powers quite deliberately a revival of civic order within the target state would actually threaten the partitioning power because it would offer a different and attractive alternative form of government but a key difference in this case was that rather than a series of great powers looming over and vivisecting a country here russia alone was taking the lead the russian extreme nationalist politician vladimir jeranovsky leader of the bizarre bizarrely misnamed liberal democratic party slyly suggested that other countries should join in the news agency reuters reported that gironovsky sent letters to the governments of poland hungary and romania urging them to also annex parts of ukraine that had once belonged to their states jodanovsky announced that it is never too late to correct historical errors whether meant as a deliberate prank or sirius zhironovsky's musings were attuned to the precedence of many partitions in the past of eastern europe of course the most urgent question is what precedents are being set now for the future as western leaders considered how to react they repeatedly stated how surprised they were and suggested that putin must not know that we are after all in the 21st century he was acting in ways more fitting of past centuries such repeated observations are troubling because they suggest the comforting but false notion that ages or centuries have their own logic and spirit that must move toward peace on the contrary leaders and people set the agenda for an age and there's no automatic default mode of peace to rely on in the absence of leadership no natural law commands that the 21st century should usher in harmony the european union and the united states condemned the putin's regime's advances and imposed sanctions on trade with russia in some cases quite reluctantly in spite of ukrainian requests they did not deliver arms to help in defense nato was now on the front line of the confrontation and poland and the baltic states in particular urged vigilance and action nato's concept of collective security is written into article 5 of its charter which states that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all in all of nato's life to date that promise has been invoked only once after the 9 11 attacks on the united states would that promise hold in the future how would so-called hybrid warfare that is infiltrations and special operations short of open invasion be met what role would be played by other potential flashpoints including the isolated russian exclave of kaliningrad a nuclear-armed island surrounded by nato and eu members while these remained open questions one tragic reality was clear earlier ukrainians and russians were bound by many ties in history and proximate in language and intermarriage as ukraine's independent statehood began a majority of ukrainians desired good relations both with russia and the west yet it is in the nature of war and conflict that it forecloses many options that peace might have offered what the future offers the entire region of eastern europe we shall explore in our next and final lecture

Channel: Wondrium

Views: 1,861,705

Keywords: the great courses, history, eastern europe, history of eastern europe, europe, european history, ukraine invasion, ukraine news, russia ukraine, vladimir putin, russia ukraine conflict

Id: l1WL2VJOn2A

Length: 31min 53sec (1913 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Master_Duggal_Sahab]

Eastern Europe is very unfortunate (general people) always facing hardships.