NEWS ANALYSIS: Zatulin is honored with Medal for the Rebirth of Ukraine (12/17/06)

NEWS ANALYSIS: Zatulin is honored with Medal for the Rebirth of Ukraine

by Roman Solchanyk

When President George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to "Mr. Slam Dunk" (former CIA Director George Tenet) a few years ago, I thought to myself - what a hoot. It can't get any "better" than this. Talk about the ultimate slap in the face of the reality-based community - you know, those annoying misfits who read stuff and are in possession of something called memory.

Better than "slam dunk"

But wait. Ukraine's political "elites" should never be underestimated. In early December, First Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Mykola Azarov - who served as former President Leonid Kuchma's main tax-collector and, as some have claimed, Ukraine's extortionist-in-chief - awarded the Medal for the Rebirth of Ukraine (first order) to Konstantin Zatulin, a deputy of the Russian Parliament who earlier this year was declared persona non grata in Ukraine for inflaming inter-ethnic tensions and activities that were seen as posing a threat to the country's territorial integrity and inviolability. The activities in question involved his participation, as a citizen of a foreign country, in the anti-NATO protests in Crimea this summer.

Although the Rebirth of Ukraine award is not an official state honor, Mr. Zatulin nonetheless thanked the Ukrainian president and government for this distinction, which, it turns out, is linked to a little-known outfit called the Ukrainian Foundation for Cooperation, of which Mr. Azarov is the honorary president.

Participating in the award ceremony was the Russian ambassador in Kyiv and Russian members of a joint Ukrainian-Russian inter-parliamentary committee on cooperation, of which Mr. Zatulin is also a member. The ban on Mr. Zatulin's presence in Ukraine was temporarily lifted so that he could take part in the committee's deliberations in Kyiv.

Over the years, Mr. Zatulin has amassed a lengthy and impressive record of "accomplishments" in the area of facilitating Ukraine's rebirth and, more generally, Ukrainian-Russian relations, including promoting separatism in Crimea, for which he was banned from the peninsula in 1996, and leading the ultimately unsuccessful fight against Moscow's ratification of the Ukrainian-Russian "big treaty" signed in 1997.

This list can be extended. But my personal favorite in Mr. Zatulin's résumé under the heading "helping Ukraine get on its feet" is his article titled "The Moment of Truth Has Arrived in Relations Between Moscow and Kyiv," published in Nazavisimaya Gazeta in the spring of 1995. In that piece, Mr. Zatulin advanced the argument that a treaty with Ukraine was a terrible idea because it would recognize "the historically non-existent borders of an historically non-existent state."

A few years later, the Russian lawmaker - who described himself as an "admirer of empire" - co-authored a report together with another of Ukraine's friends, Andranik Migranyan, mapping out a strategy for a "single zone of Russian state-building" that called for the incorporation of all or parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, without which, according to the authors, Russia would disintegrate.

Mr. Zatulin made the following points in support of his argument: (1) Ukrainians as a single, developed nation do not exist and have never existed; (2) Ukraine is a "non-historical formation"; (3) "Ukrainianism" is a purely western Ukrainian phenomenon; (4) Ukrainian proto-statehood rests on a foundation of anti-Russian policies sponsored and financed by the West; (5) Ukraine's existence constitutes a "permanent challenge" to Russia; (6) the remedy for Ukrainian-Russian relations is "brutal therapy," which may require precipitating the collapse of the Ukrainian state.

Say what? An award for the Rebirth of Ukraine?

I guess I must have missed that memo about Mr. Zatulin's other supportive endeavors.

Under different circumstances, all of this could be written off as another production in the theater of the absurd that is contemporary Ukraine. For example, in what other country - particularly one that claims to be "European" and demands that it be recognized as such - is the minister of foreign affairs barred from taking part in a session of the Cabinet of Ministers by his colleagues?

A disturbing pattern

The circumstances in Ukraine, however, are such that with every passing day seemingly isolated events appear to be coalescing into a pattern.

The vice prime minister for humanitarian affairs, Dmytro Tabachnyk, insists, mockingly and disparagingly, that it is impermissible for Ukraine's cultural policies to be formulated "only in the interests of the thin layer of the Ukrainian-speaking intelligentsia." In other words, the government is not prepared to entertain the notion that millions of Ukrainians in Ukraine might also have some interests in what passes for "cultural policy" in Ukraine.

The largest party in Parliament, with two exceptions, refuses to support a bill declaring the Great Famine of the early 1930s to be an act of genocide. The bill passes by a narrow margin of 233 votes - with 200 deputies expressing their displeasure by boycotting the vote - but only after, among other things, the phrase "Ukrainian nation" was replaced by "Ukrainian people." Must be something wrong with the word "nation."

And now, a prominent Russian lawmaker who is convinced that there is no Ukraine, but who serves on an official committee of cooperation with members from a supposedly non-existent country, is honored for contributions to the rebirth of that, uh, non-existent country.

And still, calls to "consolidate"

In the meantime, the president of the country, in an interview with the BBC, urges all of Ukraine's political forces to "consolidate" for the good of the nation.

Huh? Did I miss yet another memo?

No matter, it may be too late. A consolidation has already occurred - but not the one that the president is hoping for. As the weekly Dzerkalo Tyzhnia recently pointed out, in a move that would otherwise go against the laws of nature, it would seem that the party of big business, industrial barons and oligarchs from the Donbas (Party of the Regions) has found a common platform with the party of the downtrodden proletariat, Soviet "internationalism" and restoration of the USSR (Communists) - namely, anti-national policies.

Roman Solchanyk, Ph.D., is an international affairs analyst in Santa Monica, Calif., and author of the forthcoming book "The New Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova."

| Home Page |