76  February 2016
U
krainians like to say theirs is the largest fully
European country. That scale is enhanced by
a transport infrastructure relying on
unwieldy, Soviet-era rail and roads that are
mostly potholed outside of a few stretches
of motorway, as I discovered to my discomfort on a
recent trip into eastern Ukraine. Moreover, with aver-
age salaries less than €200 per month travel is a rare
luxury for most in this profoundly unequal society. In a
country of great diversity and relative youth, national
identity is fragile.
The depredations of the Soviet era when Ukraine was
theoretically an autonomous republic but really an inte-
gral part of a vast imperium are apparent in the
unforgiving architecture of its cities. In the outskirts of
Kiev, as elsewhere, tower blocks loom at heights
unknown in Western Europe, and inside the capital con-
crete monoliths sully the splendour of a
pre-Revolutionary heritage that includes the UNESCO
medieval site of Santa Sophia Cathedral.
The deadening weight of the communist aesthetic
recalls the advice of Marxist theorist George Lukács:
“What is crucial is that reality as it seems to be should be
thought of as something man cannot change and its
unchangeability should have the force of a moral
imperative”.
In the long shadow of imposing structures and heroic
monuments people would accept the inevitability of the
triumph of Communism. Alas, since independence in 1991
the trend has been to replace this with the brash sheen of
American capitalism, an implicit genuflection to the Cold
War victor and its consumerism.
Obviously architecture was the least of the excesses of
Communism in Ukraine. That mantle is reserved for their
great famine known as Holodomor when Stalin’s policy of
de-Kulakization (1929-1932) killed something between two
and seven million Ukrainians and annihilated the social
fabric of village life: either you took a job in a collective or
went to a city elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
Simultaneously, entire nations, including the Tartars
who once occupied Crimea, were forcibly relocated to dif-
ferent parts of the empire. This destruction was
compounded by the German invasion in World War II,
although Ukrainians had an ambivalent, and in some cases
Fragile Ukraine
Beleaguered and polarised, the future is a
tolerant and civic nationalism
by Frank Armstrong
Each revolution, including Euromaidan
against President Yanukovych, brings
disappointment. The oligarchs dominate,
led by President Poroshenko,
the country's richest man
INTERNATIONAL
  February 2016 77
collaborative, relationship with the Nazis during over two
years of occupation.
Today in Ukraine most cities in the south and east are
Russian-speaking. Parentage is often, unsurprisingly,
mixed: a group of young professionals I met in the city
of Dniperpetrovsk revealed ancestry Ukrainian, Russian
and even Tartar. All spoke Russian as their first language
but considered themselves Ukrainian. Even religion, his-
torically, did not separate Ukrainians from Russians as
both followed the Greek Orthodox rite. It evoked the
question: what does it mean to be Ukrainian beyond
living within the borders of that state?
A civic nationalism divorced from the kind of destruc-
tive ethnic identification that bedevilled the break-up of
Yugoslavia would minimise lethal divides. But the cur-
rent taste for symbols of Ukrainian identity, such as the
surge in popularity for traditional dress, suggests this is
not on the agenda. Pride in cultural inheritance can easily
be skewed towards atavistic violence.
I discovered an increasing despondency among my
new-found friends at the capacity of Ukraine’s politicians
to bring meaningful improvement to the country. Each
revolution, including the latest Euromaidan against the
staggering corruption of former President Victor Yanuko-
vych has brought disappointment. The
oligarchs remain dominant, led from the
front by billionaire President Petro
Poroshenko, the richest man in the
country.
According to a recent report from
the Kharkiv Human Rights Protec-
tion Group a desultory one in five
cases against high-ranking offi-
cials ends with conviction and
imprisonment.
The aspirations of the young and
dynamic quivering at the possibility
of joining the European mainstream
remain frustrated. Inevitably in some
quarters there is nostalgia for a more authori-
tarian era proximately manifest today by Vladimir
Putin’s Russia. According to my friends in Dniperpetrovsk
the divisions in Ukraine are often generational.
Nearby Donetsk is still controlled by Russian-led insur-
gents. An unsteady ceasefire has held there since
September. There have even been attempts, as in Russia,
to rehabilitate Stalin. The city was previously called
Stalino. Nostalgia for the Soviet Empire is being
incubated.
Russian aggression feeds extreme Ukrainian national-
ism. Military build-ups have pernicious effects wherever
they are found. In Kiev an array of tanks is parked outside
the foreign ministry and the distinctive grey camouflage
of the Ukrainian army now seems a fashion accessory,
most of all for supporters of the far-right Svoboda (Truth)
party.
An encounter I had with a Svoboda character in a Kiev
hostel was revealing. When I said I was Irish he exclaimed
his admiration for the IRA, and was a little put out to hear
that I was no supporter of what he perceived to be another
underdog fighting an imperial foe. The fighters against
the Russian-led rebels in Donetsk were his heroes.
Ukraine offers huge rewards for Russia. It is an
agricultural power house, once the bread basket of the
Soviet Union, and today is the world’s fifth largest corn
producer and the largest producer of sunflower oil. Fur-
ther, although corruption even extends to the awarding
of degrees, its educated population especially in techni-
cal disciplines are an important asset.
All nations have their myths that bind disparate groups
together inside one state. The complication for Ukraine
is that its history is deeply entwined with that of Rus-
sia’s. Even the name ‘Rus’ originates in the medieval
kingdom with its capital Kiev established by Viking colo-
nists before it was gradually Slavicised. Ukrainian
identity was forged through contact with neighbouring
empires: first the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that
once stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and
afterwards the partitions of Poland beginning in the
eighteenth century, under the Austro-Hungarian Haps-
burg Empire which served as a hothouse for numerous
nationalist identities, including Zionism and Nazism.
As their language crystallised in a form and with a
script different to that of Russian, and poets especially
Taras Shevchenko illuminated a national character, nine-
teenth century nationalists turned to the Cossacks as a
distinguishing source of identity. Translated as ‘free
man’, Cossacks were bands of escaped serfs
that resisted the Catholicism of their
Polish landlords and established
military settlements along the
Dniper and elsewhere, in the late
middle ages. Their indomitable
spirit strikes a chord with
modern Ukrainians and is res-
urrected in re-
creating of their settlements in
Dniperpetrovsk’s impressive
historical museum. The tragedy
for the Cossacks was that after
throwing off the shackles of the
Polish nobility they succumbed to the
Russian Empire. This has an obvious con-
temporary resonance.
Passing through the vast interior, as giant corn fields
stretch beyond the horizon, one sees the great possibili-
ties for this country. Encountering the wide-eyed interest
of people in world affairs, their knowledge generally
beyond that of their Western European counterparts, fos-
ters a visitor’s optimism; witnessing small kindnesses
from those with few possessions is touching. But the cur-
rent system is failing people and the longer that endures
the further the already pronounced wealth inequalities
will grow, and with that the entrenchment of petty
tyrannies.
Membership of the European Union is not a panacea
for Ukraine. Ensuing emigration could lead to a crippling
brain drain, and a free market could be problematic in
some sectors. But equally Europe cannot allow a new Iron
Curtain to develop. In the end Ukraine needs to develop
an accommodation with its Russian neighbour to whose
fate it is bound.
Young Ukrainians need reassurance that their country
can be reformed. Countering Lukács: reality as it seems
to be should be thought of as something man can
change.
Stalin’s policy of
de-Kulakization killed
between two and seven
million Ukrainians and
annihilated the fabric
of village life

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