Ukraine, Russia, Two Vladimirs, and the burden of history

Are Russians comfortable in submitting themselves to the greatness of the state? And how does that imperial tendency conflict with the more open-minded, liberal spirit at play in Kiev? The double-headed eagle is an apt symbol; one head faces west, the other looks toward the eastern empire. 

By Greg Guma

Rutland Herald, Brattleboro Reformer, Times-Argus

No long ago, to many North Americans, Ukraine was just another obscure eastern European region. Most people could not find it on a map. Today it is hard to avoid, although many people still prefer to ignore the barrage of disquieting reports that it could be the place where the next “world war” begins.

Along with wall-to-wall news coverage has come a firehose of misinformation. I won’t detail or amplify any of that in this article. But it might be helpful to understand some of Ukraine’s complex history, as well as its relationship with Russia. 

More than a century after the 1917 revolution that led to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Kiev’s prince Vladimir the Great remains a revered figure. He ruled from 980 to 1015, brought a form of Christianity to what was known then as Kievan Rus, and is a key to understanding the enduring tension between Russia and Ukraine. The region’s name itself underlines the problem. But when that ancient Vladimir was in charge, Rievan Rus was a voluntary group of independent states, an embryonic democracy that was ultimately destroyed by Mongol invaders.

The region’s embrace of Byzantine Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism, however, had long-term consequences for world history. In the end, it placed Russia, at least spiritually, outside Western Europe and encouraged a faith-based isolationism, along with the idea that Moscow could become the Third Rome. Russia, went the prophecy, was destined by God to shape the fate of humanity.

Even Stalin admired the first Vladimir, and renovated the huge statue of him erected in Kiev in 1853. For many Russians he remains a link to their distant past. But for modern Ukrainians he is primarily the medieval leader who established Kievan Rus long before Moscow even existed. In The White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov explored the historic split between Russia and its rebellious neighbor. A former journalist who became a novelist, he wrote perceptively about the tension between the Ukrainian people and Russian state power, and also about the difficult transition from monarchy to the USSR’s “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

In general, he asserted, Russians admire leaders who exhibit (and use) their power. But are they completely comfortable in submitting themselves to the greatness of the state? And how does that imperial tendency conflict with the more open-minded, liberal spirit at play in Kiev? The double-headed eagle, dating from the Byzantine period, is an apt symbol; one head faces west, the other looks toward the eastern empire. 

After annexing Crimea in 2014, the new Vladimir justified Russia’s claim to the peninsula in an address to the Duma (legislature). “We are not simply close neighbors but, as I have said many times, we are one people.” he announced. “Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” Today he is taking that belief to its logical but brutal conclusion.

The implications are clear. When the European Union supported the Maiden uprising eight years ago, Putin saw it as an assault, as well as an attempt to destroy Russia’s supranational identity. Maidan and what followed revealed a sharp turn to the west, a move Putin viewed as a betrayal that endangered Russia’s national security. 

Two year later, the new Vladimir had another statue of Vladimir the Great built just outside the Kremlin wall. It was a symbolic call for national unity, but one seen by many Ukrainians as an appropriation of their heritage. What did the earlier Vladimir have to do with Moscow, they wondered.

There was one Russia leader who did have a decent relationship with Ukraine. Nikita Khrushchev was born on the Ukrainian border, and moved to Yuzovka, a mining town in Donetsk, in his teens. In 1938, Stalin appointed him as Communist Party Secretary in Kiev. His job: to restore normalcy after the man-made famine of 1932-33, known as Holodome. Over six million people had died after grain was confiscated for export from Russian and Ukrainian peasants, in exchange for the heavy machinery needed for Stalin’s industrialization campaign. Khrushchev argued against relying on Ukraine for agriculture and did what he could to mitigate its impact.

Khrushchev also served in Ukraine during the “Great Patriotic War” (the West calls it World War II) and afterward ran the Communist Party in Kiev. But in 1956, upon taking national power, he denounced Stalin’s crimes and launched de-Stalinization, known in the USSR as the Thaw. No other Soviet republic responding to this move more enthusiastically than Ukraine. 

Today some Ukrainians consider Khrushchev, despite his actions, just one more Soviet oppressor. But many show him respect. Although he was an ethnic Russian, they know that he often said, “in his soul” he wanted to be Ukrainian. Khrushchev understood that, with its warmer climate and fertile land, the country had served as the empire’s “bread basket.” But when it counted, he argued that it should not be the only one.

Since the Maidan revolt, Kiev has become home for many exiled opponents of the current Russian regime. In the Ukrainian capitol they can pursue careers and conduct business without the surveillance and limitations that would face them at home. One of them, profiled in the 2019 Russian study, In Putin’s Footsteps, is Ilya Ponomarev, at one time an opposition member of the State Duma. “Before Crimea,” he claimed, “our country was an example to the world. Now Russia is just like the United States — aggressively interfering in other countries’ affairs when they disagree with those countries’ politics.” 

Most Ukrainians don’t see it exactly that way. As a Ukrainian diplomat has admitted, the country could do better in fighting corruption and building its economy. On the other hand, “Ukrainians do not believe state power is sacred, as they do in Russia. There the Kremlin is the center of the state that people serve. Here those on top of the political ladders are just the hired hands of the people.”

The past has not been forgotten in Ukraine. In 2006, specifically, a law recognized the Holodome famine as an act of genocide — a charge currently being thrown back at Ukraine without proof as a justification for invasion. Following the Holodome law a monument recognizing its cost was built near an 11th Century monastery, just yards from a World War II memorial. 

Despite current Russian charges — echoed by some on the far left and right — that the Maidan movement was the start of a neo-Nazi resurgence, the two monuments illustrate a different reality. Ukrainians do appreciate the sacrifices made by Russia and others during war in the 1940s. But they also suggest that Ukrainians remember other terrible moments in their fraught relationship with Russia, have their own interpretation of the past, and don’t want to be any other state’s subjects in the future.