Ukraine's Hissy Fit

 

The country that used to be the breadbasket of Europe is a new bone of contention between the European Union and Russia. Ukraine, the land of the southern Russians (as Yugoslavia was the land of the southern Slavs), sits on Russia's Western frontier.  

It is rumored that the Poles and Lithuanians are pushing Brussels to bring Ukraine into the European fold. Although they have old scores to settle, these pale in comparison to a shared desire to payback Russia for a historical pattern of domination.

It is difficult for Westerners to understand why any country would want to join a European Union that is currently experiencing so many problems. In fact, this is a totally irrational desire: the Orthodox former Soviet Republics, whether it be Bela Rus, Ukraine or Georgia, are obsessed with not wanting to be identified with historically backward or Communist Russia. Notwithstanding their own backwardness they want to  be considered part of the culturally superior West.  Having lived in Eastern Europe for six years when it was still part of the Soviet Empire, I can testify that it is impossible to overestimate this longing.  When I worked at the Hungarian Radio, lack of recognition that together with Poland and Czechoslovakia it was indeed part of Europe was expressed as: "They think we still cook meat under the saddle.'  Of all the countries of the East European block, Hungary most actively strove to play the role of bridge between East and West. Its efforts culminated in the opening of its frontier with Austria starting in May 1989 that allowed thousands of East German tourists to reach the West. A previously unthinkable act, it led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November and the dissolution of the Soviet block. [Kiev]

But Bela Rus, Ukraine and Georgia have far less of a claim to a European identity than the Eastern European satellite nations. In the Middle Ages, Bela Rus, Ukraine and Russia were all part of the principality of Kiev, or Kievan Rus, which extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. While all three countries claim Kievan Rus as their cultural heritage, today independent Bela Rus and Ukraine constitute a sort of no-man's land that buffers their vast and powerful neighbor.  As of 2011, Ukraine was the world's third-largest grain exporter , and according to Wikipedia, it is one of ten most attractive agricultural regions. Although regarded as a developing economy with high potential, indispensable economic and legal reforms would be more brutally implemented under Brussels tutelage than if they happened at Ukraine's own pace.

And yet, for western Ukrainians, (as opposed to the pro-Russian eastern half), the fact that Brussels cannot afford to bring them up to speed economically is obviously less important than being part of glamorous, sophisticated Europe.  They probably feel that they are well-acquainted with hardship, but the demonstrators in Kiev should ask themselves whether they would they be happy in a European Union that is being forced to walk back its welfare state?    

With respect to mutual recriminations of behind-the-scenes manipulation of the population by both Russia and the EU, this is surely a fact: Napoleon and Hitler both contributed to Russia's obsession with being surrounded, while the EU, increasingly beholden to Wall Street, carries out the Empire's policy of intimidation and encroachment, seeking to diminish Russia's growing clout by co-opting the countries on its borders, both economically, via the EU, and militarily through NATO. 

 In my 1989 book Une autre Europe, un autre Monde I wrote that the Soviet Union could not hope to become part of the European Union because it was simply too big to be considered primus inter pares.   That situation remains the same with the Russian Republic, which covers a land area almost four times that of the European Union, even though its population is only one third that of the EU.  Nor does Russia seek EU membership.  Rather, as Vladimir Putin put it a few days ago,  explaining the danger to Russia's economy of the Ukraine being flooded with cheap European goods, "What do we have to do so that they (the EU) like us?'.  

Here too, we get the same sense of being considered culturally inferior by Europe. But Russia is allied with both China and India, two powerful emerging economies, all participants in the BRICS, which include forty percent of the world's population and twenty-five percent of its GDP. In this game of chess it should be able to keep its cool, realizing that its "near abroad' - Ukraine, Bela Rus and Georgia - do not represent its future as much as do the "far abroad' BRiCS, for the "East' is now also "the South', and is destined to outweigh the "North' and the "West' however much these areas dominated the past.