Demonstrations are continuing in Kyiv and other cities. The demonstrators have mostly remained nonviolent, the police not so much.
The president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, decided not to sign an association agreement to be presented to the European Union late last week. The agreement, a first step toward joining the EU, would have begun to lift trade and travel restrictions. Yanukovych now plans to sign a “road map” for economic cooperation with Moscow.
Russia did not want Ukraine to sign the association agreement. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has tried to form trade and military associations with other states that had been Soviet republics. None of those attempts has been particularly successful.
Ukraine was a part of the Russian Empire, and then of the Soviet Union. It’s possible to look at all of Russian history as an attempt to defend its continental boundaries by acquiring or pacifying the territories just outside them. Ukraine’s name, which means “boundarylands,” exemplifies the dynamic.
Before Russia, there was a group of states structured around larger cities, Novgorod the largest. The Vikings, whom the Russians called Varangians, sailed down the larger rivers to trade and plunder. Viking trade routes in the 8th to 11th centuries are shown in this map; the Volga trade route is in red and the trade route to Greece in purple. Other trade routes are shown in orange.
In parts of what is now Ukraine and southeast toward the Caucasus, was the Khazar Khanate, an independent country. Over the centuries, a great many ethnic groups migrated across the land north of the Black Sea, from all directions. The land is fertile, the weather milder than the lands further north. Some history here, with lots more maps.
The Vikings, also called Rus, became the rulers of Novgorod and Kiev (now Kyiv). Each city-state had its prince, and the princes vied for primacy. The area around Kiev became known as Kievan Rus and is regarded by many Russians as the beginning of their country. By 1200, Russia ranged from the northwestern part of the Black Sea in the south, east of the area now known as the Baltic States, north into Karelia and further east along the Arctic Ocean. There is a poor map of the area here, with more history.
The Mongols conquered large parts of Russia, including today’s Ukraine, and continued west almost to Vienna. The Swedes and Teutonic Knights advanced from the northwest. Alexander Nevsky, prince of Novgorod, stopped the Swedes and Teutonic Knights while submitting to the Mongols in order to save Novgorod.
Lithuania, in alliance with Poland, expanded into what is now Belarus and Ukraine. Here’s a map of the situation in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
Moscow grew in importance during the 14th century, and began to push the Mongols back. It took until the end of the 15th century to fully remove Mongol domination. From that time on, Russia acquired more lands than it lost, with the conquest of Siberia in the 16th century, reaching Alaska in the 18th century, expanding into central Asia in the 19th century, and the acquisition of new Soviet republics and satellites in the wake of World War II. Napoleon tried and failed to occupy western Russia.
Like the Baltic States, Ukraine declared independence after the Russian Revolution, but unlike them, it was conquered in the civil war that followed and became a republic of the Soviet Union.
Stalin’s treatment of Ukraine was brutal; in the 1930s, he engineered a famine in Ukraine when farmers there resisted the collectivization of agriculture. With today’s unrest, reports (here and here) from survivors are surfacing. World War II subjected Ukraine to Nazi occupation and Holocaust depredations and then Soviet purges. As in other countries of eastern Europe during that war, people held many different loyalties, for many different reasons. The memories of famine incurred hatred of the Soviet Union, which could mean Nazi sympathies; Nazi atrocities provoked Soviet loyalty. Some wanted to fight for Ukrainian independence. Some retreated to the forest and staged attacks on their enemies.
The end of World War II left Ukraine firmly under Soviet control, and the Baltic States were added as Soviet Republics, while Poland and other eastern European countries were nominally independent but subject to Soviet control. Russia had, once again, protected its western boundary by acquiring more territory.
Until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine was never an independent country. The Soviet Union pursued policies that would make it more difficult for the republics to become independent. In Central Asia, boundaries between republics split ethnic groups. Russian workers were sent to the non-Russian republics, particularly in mining and industry. Eastern Ukraine received large numbers of Russian workers. The Russians, and campaigns of Russianization of language, were intended to dilute non-Russian nationalism.
The Baltic republics withdrew from the Soviet Union in August 1991, as the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev distracted Moscow. In December 1991, the rest of the republics, including Ukraine, declared themselves independent.
The Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, have successfully become democratic, with improving economies. The other twelve former republics, including Ukraine, have been less successful.
The success of the Baltic states has confused many analyses of the former Soviet states. Some of the advocates of the Iraq war used the Baltic states as a model: remove the dictator, and democracy flourishes. It wasn’t that simple. People in the Baltic states had their own languages and traditions, which they used to unify the population. They had had independent democratic governments in the years between the world wars. They began the politics of separation from the Soviet Union long before 1991. For one example, the 1991 parliaments were largely the Supreme Soviets of a few years before, renamed and repurposed. Emigrés were mobilized to help develop democratic institutions and to speak in their own countries in favor of independence.
Ukraine had very little of this; their language and traditions are very similar to Russian ones. As a larger country, it was harder to unify the population. Emigrés were not called upon in the same way. The eastern half of the nation was highly sympathetic to Russia. So it did not have the same path to independence as the Baltic states.
The Orange Revolution of late 2004 brought hope that government corruption would be ended, but that hope was dashed. Viktor Yushchenko was elected president in a re-run election over Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate preferred by Moscow. Yuliya Tymoshenko became prime minister. Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, and one of his first actions was to prosecute Tymoshenko for embezzlement and abuse of power, for which she was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Long distances across difficult territory has always been part of Russia’s military defense, so, in addition to the collapse of the Soviet dream, the loss of the republics was a heavy blow. The Baltic states reached out to NATO and the EU to prevent being swallowed up by Russia again. Boris Yeltsin tried to form a Commonwealth of Independent States, but it never went anywhere. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a bit more active. Belarus remains close to Moscow. Georgia would like to join NATO and the EU, but that is unlikely to happen soon. Bullying of the “near abroad” continues.
Moscow lobbied hard to keep Ukraine from signing the EU association agreement. Part of Ukraine’s reality is geography. Ukraine’s northern border is with Russia. Ukraine’s natural gas supply comes from Russia.
But the economic powerhouse is the EU. Russia has failed to grow industry since 1991. Instead, it has relied on its oil exports, putting it in a category with resource states of the third world. It has no way to help Ukraine grow economically.
People in favor of the association agreement are demonstrating in Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine, as they did in 2004. This time it appears that even the Russian-oriented eastern part of the country is in favor of the agreement. The government is using armed force and special riot police (Berkut) to disperse them. The EU and the United States have issued statements condemning this use of force. NATO’s Secretary-General has appealed to all parties to refrain from violence. The Ukrainian ambassador to Canada and Yanukovych’s chief of staff have resigned their posts. There are rumors that police have refused to arrest demonstrators or have joined with them.
It’s not clear that the protesters have a political plan other than to make their objections known. No opposition politicians are ready to take the reins. Without competent politicians who are not under Moscow’s thumb, nothing is likely to change.
Top map of Ukraine today from Perry-Casteñeda Library Map Collection.
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