EDITORIAL: Pereiaslav's lingering effects (06/23/02)

EDITORIAL

Pereiaslav's lingering effects

It's getting to be quite exasperating, actually. More and more, it seems, Ukraine is looking to Russia to determine its policies. This week, RFE/RL analyst Taras Kuzio reports on Ukraine's new foreign policy concept, which has been dubbed "To Europe with Russia." (See his article on page 2.) The advent of this policy, writes Dr. Kuzio, indicates that Ukraine is "meant to operate only under Russia's wing in the same manner as when it was a 'younger brother' in the Soviet era." Add to this President Leonid Kuchma's pronouncement that "Ukraine cannot make any progress without Russia," and you really begin to wonder who's running the show. As Dr. Kuzio argues in his analysis, Ukraine's new foreign policy can more appropriately be called its "Little Russian" foreign policy.

One of the strongest indications of Ukraine's very questionable turn to Russia is the fact that in March of this year President Kuchma issued a decree "On the Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Pereiaslav Kozak Council of 1654," proclaiming that in two years' time the jubilee of the Treaty of Pereiaslav will be officially commemorated in Ukraine. The infamous treaty, just in case readers don't recall their 17th century history, was the ill-fated pact between Ukrainian Kozak Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Russian Tsar Aleksei Mykhailovich, as a result of which Ukraine became a protectorate of Muscovy.

According to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, there were differing interpretations of the treaty by both sides. Ukrainians saw it as a temporary political and military alliance, aimed at protecting Ukraine from Poland, but Moscow used the pact to increase its interference into Ukraine's affairs. Russian scholars believe the treaty "formalized the voluntary incorporation of Ukraine into Russia," and some considered it to be "an actual act of union" between the two states. Soviet historians, of course, interpreted the Treaty of Pereiaslav as the culmination of the desire of two "fraternal peoples" to unite. For decades under the Soviet regime the treaty's anniversary was celebrated as a jubilee of the "reunification" of Ukraine and Russia. (In fact, Kyiv's huge Arch of Friendship of Peoples was erected to mark that "reunification.")

Contemporary Ukrainian scholars, including those at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, note that marking the anniversary of the Treaty of Pereiaslav, even though the jubilee is now called a "commemoration" (a more neutral characterization) instead of a "celebration," continues the Soviet tradition of fawning before Moscow and the "elder brother." (See their open letter on page 3.) The CIUS representatives write: "Do the authors of the decree and members of the organizing committee not understand that they are preparing to commemorate the anniversary of an event that led to the abolition of the independent Ukrainian state formed under Bohdan Khmelnytsky's leadership? The March decree calls into question not only the historical legitimacy of Ukraine's current independence, but also the official genealogy of the Ukrainian government. ... Ukraine's first president, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, regarded Pereiaslav as a mistake and declared an 'end to orientation on Moscow' in 1918."

Indeed, as these scholars state, observing the Pereiaslav anniversary "will lend legitimacy to those forces in Ukraine and beyond that seek to resurrect the empire that Pereiaslav helped create." So, the crux of the matter is: Why exactly should Ukraine commemorate the Treaty of Pereiaslav?

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