CHICAGO – Ukraine is only in its third year of real independence, journalist Vitaly Portnikov told an overflow crowd at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago recently, and it is up to Ukrainians to ensure the development of a successful, modern European state.
In his presentation titled “Ukraine: the attempt to build a modern state,” one of Ukraine’s most influential journalists and political analysts used the occasion of his first formal meeting with the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States to outline the reasons for Ukraine’s long stateless existence and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Mr. Portnikov’s presentation in Chicago, on November 11, 2017, was organized by the Chicago Business and Professional Group in collaboration with the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and financial support from the Selfreliance Ukrainian American Federal Credit Union and the Heritage Foundation of 1st Security Federal Savings Bank.
Speaking in Ukrainian, Mr. Portnikov told his listeners that many Ukrainians still treat their own state as a foreign entity, as do their leaders. This is a dangerous habit they must abandon, he said, especially in the face of aggression from Russia, which has always been determined to block any such state-building efforts.
The burdens of history
According to Mr. Portnikov, the failure of Ukrainians to build their own state throughout much of their history, as well as their post-colonial mentality, can be explained by historical developments and the psychological and cultural pathologies they engendered.
Most notably, the Russian Empire and its Soviet successors successfully hijacked much of Ukrainian history. According to the version of history taught in Russian and Soviet schools, first there was Kyivan Rus’, the cradle of three “brother nations,” which was then replaced by the principality of Vladimir-Suzdal (present-day Russia). Then came the Mongol invasions, then the liberation of most of the territory from the Tatar yoke, except for an area in Poland, and finally “reunification” with Russia in one big happy family. Ukrainians appeared out of nowhere sometime in the 19th century and then wanted to separate from Russia but were brought back because, as Vladimir Putin explained, Ukrainians and Russians “are one people.”
This version of history had no room for the other heirs of Kyivan Rus’ – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Galician-Volhynian principality, he said. There was no recognition that the statehoods of Russia and Ukraine were based on different civilizational principles, that Muscovy was the successor of the Golden Horde, with its submission of all subjects and institutions to a central power, while the Ukrainian states engaged in free trade and pursued relations with other nations.
Although Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire only for several centuries – a “moment in history” – it was presented as something much more significant, he added. It became an artificially created civilization where it was a crime to defend national rights. In villages, however, it was very evident who was Ukrainian and who was not. The Ukrainian home always had a Bible and a “Kobzar,” the collection of poems by Taras Shevchenko, the creator of the Ukrainian historical narrative.
Vitaly Portnikov with guest Roxanna Markewycz.
According to Mr. Portnikov, Shevchenko understood that Ukraine’s historical myth had been co-opted by an alien state and that he had to create the Ukrainian national consciousness out of songs, poems and language because he had no other choice. As a result, Ukraine became a nation based on language and has always found it difficult to move to statehood. Throughout history those who focused on state-building were in the minority.
Independence and ambivalence
Furthermore, a certain ambivalence often undermined Ukrainian efforts at independence. When Ukrainian leaders proclaimed the Ukrainian National Republic a century ago, they first sought autonomy within the Russian state, even after the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd during the October Revolution. Ukraine declared its independence only after being attacked, when it had no other choice. Ironically, it was always Russian aggression that strengthened Ukraine’s independence project, he said.
Mr. Portnikov went on to explain that, after Ukraine declared its independence in 1918, Bolshevik organizers in Kyiv moved to Kharkiv and announced that their new state was the legitimate government of the “workers and peasants” of Ukraine. This state invited Bolshevik troops from Russia, who captured the entire country. Echoes of that event resurfaced in 2014 when Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv for Kharkiv and then Donetsk, promising to “save” Ukraine and protect its desire to be with Russia. A similar scheme also appeared during the Orange Revolution in 2004, when Mr. Putin’s emissaries tried to convince Leonid Kuchma to move his government to Kharkiv. However, the former president understood this was a trap designed to legitimize a Russian invasion and refused.
In Mr. Portnikov’s view, the post-colonial mentality also was apparent at other critical junctures in Ukraine’s recent history. Although in the referendum on independence held on December 1, 1991, over 92 percent of Ukrainian voters approved the August 24 declaration of independence made by Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, many did so primarily because they had been promised better economic conditions. In an earlier referendum, on March 17, 1991, the majority had voted for the continuation of the USSR. At that time, only a minority were for independence. “There was a division between those who were interested in building a state and those who were interested only in their personal benefit and who thought it made no difference in what country they lived but only where life would be better,” he said. Later, a corrupt elite continued to enrich itself while hiding behind the symbols of independence and further disillusioning the population.
He noted that Ukrainian citizens had numerous opportunities to reject the pro-Russian direction in their country but failed to do so. In the 1994 presidential election, Leonid Kuchma campaigned against the incumbent Leonid Kravchuk on the promise of renewing relations with Russia, which he presented as the key to national prosperity and a better life. The majority voted for Mr. Kuchma – 50 percent in central Ukraine and practically 100 percent in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Kuchma kept his promise and proceeded to build the country according to the Russian model, with an oligarchy, as in Moscow, and an all-powerful president who controlled everything.
Meanwhile, Russia considered the loss of Ukraine unthinkable, Mr. Portnikov stated. He related a brief conversation he had in 1991 with Boris Yeltsin, who admitted that he did not want a Russian state without Ukraine because without Ukraine Russia would be an Asian and not a European state. President Yeltsin also admitted he would do everything in his power to “invite” Ukraine into the Russian fold, and he and his successors did exactly that. Russia helped Mr. Kuchma defeat Mr. Kravchuk, and when Mr. Kuchma turned out to be recalcitrant, Russia launched special operations – including the Gongadze and Kolchuha scandals for which, Mr. Portnikov believes, a number of KGB agents “received medals” – until Mr. Kuchma finally signed an agreement with the Eurasian Economic Community near the end of his presidency. The Orange Revolution of 2004 was a setback for Russia, but soon Mr. Yanukovych was back and new operations were set in motion “to dissuade Ukraine from its Euro-Atlantic yearnings.”
By the time the Maidan began in 2013, Russians believed Ukraine was almost theirs, Mr. Portnikov said, and this conviction partly explains Russia’s nervous reaction. “They simply got tired of waiting,” he explained, “they thought that if they had not succeeded politically, then perhaps they would succeed militarily. If they occupied half of Ukraine, then the remainder would come with time.” He is convinced that what many Ukrainians viewed as the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia viewed as the transition from one form of the state to another, where Ukraine and Russia would be reunited.
By 2013, Ukraine’s economy was nearing collapse. Mr. Portnikov’s conversation with Mr. Yanukovych’s advisors some six months before the Maidan confirmed that the Yanukovych regime was planning to maintain social payments and artificially support the hryvnia exchange rate at 8 hrv to $1 (U.S.) until the presidential elections of 2015. After the re-election of Mr. Yanukovych, a complete dictatorship would be imposed and the exchange rate would be allowed to move to 30 hrv/ dollar.
However, the Yanukovych regime overlooked two things, he noted: the Ukrainian people and the kleptocracy of the Yanukovych gang. The money had simply run out too soon and Mr. Yanukovych desperately had to seek funds from Russia or the European Union.
Vitaly Portnikov at the book signing table, with Valentina Sidelnik, a board member of the Chicago Business and Professional Group.
Ukrainians understood the danger. Most people viewed the Yanukovych regime as foreign and believed the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement could protect their country from being swallowed by Russia. It was also a view shared by Russia, which was determined to compel Ukraine to give up the agreement just as Armenia had done.
The Maidan Revolution
While nothing much changed in Russia’s position since 1991, things were changing in Ukraine, Mr. Portnikov said. What happened during the Maidan Revolution may have appeared accidental, but it was part of historical processes that were inevitable. The beatings and shootings in Kyiv sparked massive protests. Mr. Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv launched the Russian aggression, and Russian behavior changed the pro-Russian attitudes in Ukraine. “If not for the Russian aggression, then half of Ukraine would probably continue to have pro-Russian attitudes because of the economy,” he concluded.
Thanks to the Maidan, Ukraine has been transformed into a political nation where people who were not ethnically Ukrainian felt Ukrainian. In the past, Ukrainians lived in states where “they could be Polish, Russian or Soviet – anything but Ukrainian.” The only way to be Ukrainian was on a purely ethnic level in closed ethnic communities, he said.
Mr. Portnikov realized that a major change had occurred when he observed his younger colleagues weeping during the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem at an Okean Elzy concert on the Maidan. “Not one of them was ethnically Ukrainian, but they considered themselves Ukrainian – an incredible breakthrough,” he noted.
It also became apparent that the Ukrainian political nation had expanded beyond western Ukraine and Kyiv, which had supported the 2004 Orange Revolution, to include central Ukraine. When big burly men in the dark coats and hats typical of small-town dress in central Ukraine showed up on Independence Square in Kyiv, he knew the Maidan had won. “They came because they considered themselves Ukrainian,” he explained. “Without these people Ukraine is not Ukraine. Ukraine cannot be created out of Halychyna and Kyiv. It needs to include central Ukraine, that greater Ukraine that is the essence of the nation, where everything has always happened.”
Questions about the allegiance of southern and eastern Ukraine were answered after the seizure of Crimea. Dnipro (formerly Katerynoslav, then Dnipropetrovsk), the big industrial city that had considered itself an important part of the Russian Empire, moved to the Ukrainian side, as did the large stretch of territory from Zaporizhia to Mykolayiv. “Russians seized Crimea and Ukrainians got Prydniprovia,” he concluded. Similarly, the Donbas war and the deadly fire at the Trade Unions building in Odesa convinced the Odesites that their beautiful city easily could become another “people’s republic” headed by criminals.
Building the Ukrainian state
Mr. Portnikov wrapped up his presentation with a discussion of the three key tasks facing Ukraine: to defend the state, to set the right cultural and language policy, and to combat corruption.
First, Ukraine’s volunteer battalions and Ukraine’s revitalized armed forces have demonstrated that Ukraine is prepared to meet the first crucial challenge, he said. Despite the poor economy, few Ukrainians criticize either the draft or the high expenditures for defense (with Ukraine spending proportionally more than half of the NATO countries). Unlike in the past, it is now prestigious to be a defender of Ukraine.
Second, the Ukrainian government must pass the necessary legislation to begin to repair the damage done to the Ukrainian language and culture by centuries of Russian oppression. “It is not enough to demand that people speak Ukrainian. No one will begin to speak Ukrainian without the right education. However, people will send their children to Ukrainian schools. They may still speak Russian with them, and during the breaks the children will speak Russian with each other. But their children will speak Ukrainian and be fully Ukrainian,” he said.
The right cultural policies will begin to reverse the process Mr. Portnikov observed as a schoolboy in Kyiv and later as a university student in Dnipro. Most of his schoolmates, whose parents had moved to Kyiv from surrounding villages, spoke Ukrainian when they began school but abandoned it by the eighth grade because Ukrainian was treated as a secondary and useless language. Later, at the Dnipropetrovsk University, he wondered why the only person who spoke Ukrainian was an ethnic Russian who taught Ukrainian philology. As she explained to him, the other lecturers did not speak Ukrainian because they were ethnic Ukrainians and afraid.
Mr. Portnikov predicted that in 20 years Ukrainian will be spoken throughout Ukraine, even in the streets of Odesa. This is not a nationalistic proclamation, he noted, but rather recognition of a reality described a century ago by the Zionist writer Volodymyr Zhabotynsky, who wrote that “the Ukrainian peasant will prevail over everything,” over his oppressors, over those who undermine his beliefs and values. “When he wrote that article there was no Ukraine, only the empire. But all of his predictions came true because he was not a Russian chauvinist. He was a nationalist and he understood the truth of another nation,” Mr. Portnikov concluded.
Economic, anti-corruption reforms
Ukraine’s biggest challenge is to reform the economy and to combat corruption. Both tasks are hampered by the prevailing culture of “customary corruption,” where most people believe problems can be best solved by knowing the right “kum” (crony) rather than by passing the appropriate laws. Ironically, it is Ukraine’s poverty that offers it some hope, he said. Ukraine never would have embarked on reforms if it had money, but since its creditors are demanding an honest economy, honest courts and controls, it is forced to adapt.
Although there is great resistance to reform on the part of both citizens and the government, there is no choice because the current system simply cannot survive. Without medical reform, medical care will collapse entirely in the smaller towns. Without trust in government, citizens will continue to avoid paying taxes and will fail to invest for their own old age. Meanwhile, the current pension system will exhaust itself as the number of wage earners who pay taxes continues to shrink. At that point, Mr. Portnikov joked, it will not matter much if the citizens of Ukraine speak Ukrainian.
The speaker ended his presentation with an affirmation of faith in Ukraine’s ability to move from being a “nation of rebellions” to a nation of “constructive change” and to become a modern, prosperous state. After all, in the past Ukraine has met challenges when it had to, he concluded.
Mr. Portnikov is the founder and host of the popular “Politclub” talk show on the Kyiv-based Espreso TV channel. He also is a regular contributor and columnist for a wide range of Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Belarusian and Latvian publications, as well as Israel’s most popular Russian-language newspaper, Vesti. He is the winner of the Zolote Pero 1989 award of the Ukrainian Association of Journalists and a nominee for the 2017 Taras Shevchenko award for his two collections of essays, “Mother of God in the Synagogue” and “Prison for Angels.”