“The Ukraine is a very fertile country, but by no means agreeable.”
– Madame de Staël
“500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend [Ukraine] against 140 million Russians.”
– Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland
For three years, many who couldn’t previously distinguish the Ukraine from a ukulele confidently identified heroes and villains in that corner of the world.
The last several months, as the futility of the fight became undeniable, even the most ardent warhawks appeared ready to move on. They seemed almost bored with Ukraine, resigned that a wasteful war would wind down… and began putting their fury on other fads.
But then, last Friday, this happened:
And suddenly… Blue and Gold was back in fashion!
I’m neither a Russophile (except with regard to one woman) nor a “Putin apologist” (whatever that is). But I do have an aversion to being vaporized in a nuclear war.
About multi-faceted conflicts in distant lands among people we’ll never meet, it’s OK to be indifferent. In fact, it’s probably smart.
To almost everyone, particularly flag-emoji outsiders who are most emotional in their predictable opinions, foreign affairs are incomprehensible. The more we learn, the less we know. Which is ample reason to keep our distance.
Hunk of Meat
That is particularly true regarding the sticky web weaving Russia to Ukraine. Let’s pull some threads, and see what we can untangle.
Albeit to a lesser degree than many Mideast countries that were completely made up, the Ukraine is an amorphous construct. Even its modern Slavonic name means “on the edge”, what Americans might call a frontier.
As with Poland or the Punjab, it’s historically been a hunk of meat buzzed by hungry flies, and regularly contested by rival dogs. Over the centuries, Russians, Ottomans, and Mongols tugged it east, whereas Poles, Austrians, and Americans have pulled it west.
On occasion, the hounds drop the slab, show their teeth, and turn on each other. Which is why canines from distant neighborhoods should stay on their leash.
The Ukraine is not merely a breadbasket of Europe. It’s its cradle. It’s the land through which the greatest number of European peoples approached their eventual homeland. It’s also the fertile crib of Mother Russia.
From north of Lake Balkhash and the regions round the Aral Sea, the fourth century Huns pressed west. These warriors epitomized ferocity, and were quintessential nomads. “Their country”, said a proverb, “was the back of a horse”.
Pressed by eastern enemies and depleted lands, the invaders rode “their country” across the steppes, forded the Volga, and overcame the Ostrogoths in what is now Ukraine.
From the other direction, migrant Slavs crossed the Danube, to scoop scattered crumbs of stale Roman bread. In the sixth century, Avars arrived thru southern Russia to fill the vacuum of vacating Huns. They enslaved the Slavs, who gave their name to a perpetual practice.
Creating the Ukraine
The original Slavs probably came from the marshy regions of western Russia, bounded roughly by Kiev, Mogilev, and Brest-Litovsk. These poor people were regularly overrun, repeatedly enslaved, and routinely pushed around.
Migration and war shuffled them across eastern Europe, breeding an abiding variety of kindred customs and related languages. Polish, Czech, and Slovak tongues rose in the west. Great Russian, White Russian, and “Little Russian“ (Ruthenian and Ukrainian) developed in the east. Nearly all of these…as well as Slovene, Serb, and Bulgarian to the south…have remained mostly intelligible to speakers of any one of them.
Several Slavic tribes settled the valleys of the Dnieper and the Don. They cleared forests, drained swamps, killed beasts, and created the Ukraine.
By the ninth century, Scandinavian Vikings invaded from the north, and plied Russian rivers. They penetrated as far south as Kiev, which grew as Moslem control of the eastern Mediterranean diverted trade from Italian ports to Russian towns. By the tenth century, Kiev had become the commercial hub of an emerging Rus.
As the millennium turned, Vladimir, Fifth Grand Duke of Kiev, ruled the rising principality. His marriage to the daughter of Emperor Basil II united Russian regions in religion, alphabet, and art to the Byzantine empire they longed to conquer.
Islands and Poles
For several hundred years, the various principalities that comprised Russia mostly acknowledged the suzerainty of Kiev. But by the 13th century, the Kievan realm began to recede. Eighty civil wars and almost fifty invasions ravaged Russia in this period.
As Italian commerce revived, Black Sea commerce faltered… and Kiev declined. Mongol invasions sealed the city’s Medieval fate. It was about this time that leadership passed from the “Little Russians” of Ukraine to the “Great Russians” around the nascent village of Moscow.
As late as 1300, “Russia” existed only as scattered islands of northern city-states, Lithuanian dependencies, and eastern principalities floating haphazardly on a vast feudal sea. As Moscow grew and Russia congealed, Kiev lay dormant. Around it, the Cossacks stirred and the Poles moved in.
In the mid-seventeenth century, a Cossack chief serving the occupying Poles demanded redress for an insult from a ruling Polish nobleman. Not receiving satisfaction, he fled to the Crimea, and enlisted the khan of the Tatars to help him overthrow the Poles.
As often happens, the mercenary alliance was initially fruitful, but ultimately soured. The Poles were pushed back. But their new king upped the ante. Bribery turned the Tatars. They ditched the Cossacks, who resorted to Russia to rescue Ukraine and (most importantly) themselves.
Swinging Gate
After receiving the request, Czar Alexis asked his assembly to annex Ukraine. Despite the risk of war with Catholic Poland, the annexation of a Ukraine both Orthodox and Russian was ultimately approved.
The Cossacks, dreading the Russian czar less than the Turkish sultan or the Polish king, also agreed. They voted unanimously to yield Ukraine to emerging Muscovy.
Coming during the same generation Russia conquered Siberia to reach the Pacific, this acquisition implies that the real founder of the Russian Empire was Czar Alexis rather than his celebrated son, Peter the Great.
But as thru a swinging gate in a western saloon, fresh fighters routinely crossed this fluid frontier. Crimean Tatars resented Russian rule, and shifted allegiance from the victorious Cossacks to the vengeful Poles.
After years of war and a convoluted peace, Ukraine was carved. Poland kept the west (with long interludes of Turkish rule). Kiev and Ukraine east of the Dnieper were ceded to Russia. This division held for a century, till the first partition of Poland.
During this period, under the imperial guidance of Romanov rule, Ukraine struggled to preserve its identity under nominal control of the Dnieper Cossacks. This soil sowed many resentments.
After a failed Ukrainian attempt to break away during a Swedish invasion, the Russians annexed Crimea and suppressed Ukraine. They renamed it “Little Russia”, and abolished all traces of separate traditions.
