ANALYSIS: Russian press reports raise the specter of disintegration (04/01/01)

ANALYSIS

Russian press reports raise the specter of disintegration

by Paul Goble
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

A spate of articles in the Moscow press last week have suggested that the current political crisis in Kyiv is already increasing regional tensions in Ukraine and could lead to the disintegration of the Ukrainian state.

But like similar reports just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these commentaries appear less a genuine prognostication of what is likely to occur than an obvious effort to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to turn to Moscow for its security needs.

As the political crisis in Ukraine has deepened over the last few weeks, the Russian media have been full of ever more items concerning the challenges President Leonid Kuchma faces in trying to quiet demands that he resign because of his alleged involvement in the murder of independent journalist Heorhii Gongadze last fall. Moscow outlets have given extensive coverage both to the Gongadze case and to demonstrations against President Leonid Kuchma.

Last week, however, the Russian media contained some more apocalyptic predictions. Moscow's Nezavisimaya Gazeta, for example, on March 20 featured an interview with the president of the ethnic Russian community in Ukraine who said Russians there are angry at the Ukrainian authorities and now seek to develop closer ties with the Russian Federation in order to promote the creation of a new union state.

On March 21, Russian wire services carried the results of a poll in Ukraine showing that the citizens of that country have increasingly less trust in the central Ukrainian government and growing trust in regional authorities. And earlier last week, another Russian article explicitly suggested what many talked about a decade ago but which has seldom been discussed in recent years: the possibility that Ukraine could in fact disintegrate into three sections.

The article in question argued that not only was there the possibility that Ukraine could split between the ethnic Russian eastern portion and the ethnic Ukrainian central portion, but also that the six western oblasts of Ukraine, the most nationalistic region of all, might break away as well, given its orientation toward Rome rather than toward the Orthodox east.

Such articles inevitably attract attention due to their apocalyptic quality, and indeed some of their authors may be making these predictions for no reason other than that. But the appearance of so many articles of that nature at once, together with ever more explicit Russian government calls for working with the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine and elsewhere, suggests that more may be at work than the desire of some journalists for attention.

Indeed, in many ways, this current upsurge of such predictions inevitably recalls two earlier periods when Russian media carried similar suggestions. Just before the end of the Soviet Union, journalists around then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev suggested that an independent Ukraine would inevitably break apart along ethnic lines, with a significant portion of the republic choosing to join Moscow.

A second media upsurge on this subject took place in 1992 and 1993 when Russian analysts routinely suggested that Ukraine, a compound country of Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Russian- speaking Russians, was unlikely to be able to sustain itself as an independent country.

In both of these earlier cases, it now appears, these predictions were intended to be less a description of some future reality than a means of intimidating the Ukrainian government and even the Ukrainian people to follow Moscow's line, lest they lose even more. But for the bulk of the last decade, most observers in Russia and elsewhere have become convinced that Ukraine's multinational population is among the least of the challenges Kyiv faces.

Indeed, these analysts and commentators have suggested, Ukraine's simultaneous efforts at nation- and state-building have been far more successful than many had expected. The problems Kyiv faces have arisen not from ethnic or regional divisions but have been largely self-inflicted by a Ukrainian political leadership that has remained divided, corrupt and uncertain in its goals.

Now, as almost a decade ago, Moscow appears to be invoking again the threat of Ukrainian disintegration not so much to warn of what is likely to happen, but rather to put pressure on the embattled president to conclude that close ties with Moscow are his and his country's only salvation.

Some people around President Kuchma may in fact be convinced, but the experience of a decade ago suggests that many Ukrainians are likely to see through this new specter of disintegration and to become more - not less - committed to the defense of the independence of their country. If that happens, then this specter may acquire a reality, albeit one directly opposite to what its creators appear to intend.

Paul Goble is the publisher of RFE/RL Newsline.

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