Some events rise to the level of civilizational challenges, given just the right historical circumstances. Ukraine’s trajectory in the coming months and years will prove to be one such event, for the path it chooses will determine more than just its own fate. Its choice will serve as a test of Russia’s role, showing us whether Russia will continue to perceive itself as an empire ready and willing to bully any neighbor it can. Ukraine’s choice will also demonstrate to what extent Europe is committed to the values it espouses, and how far the West is prepared to expand its influence.
Even without these civilizational consequences looming over its head, Ukraine has found choosing its civilizational path to be an agonizing ordeal. The Ukrainian elite—not the society as a whole—has presented the biggest problems in this regard. By coming out in great numbers to the Maidan (Independence Square) in 2004, Ukrainians proved that they were ready to defend one of the backbone principles of an open society: the peaceful transfer of power. But the Ukrainian elite (primarily its alleged reform segment) has shown itself to be feckless when it comes to guaranteeing the new rules of the game for the whole of society.
This is not to say that Ukraine could have ever had an easy path; from the beginning it has faced structural obstacles in its choice of trajectory. Ukraine, for instance, became a state before becoming a nation. In order to shore up its national identity—an essential ingredient for consolidating society—Ukraine first has to develop one. To do this, it must extract itself from the “imperial body” that once consumed it. This process of detachment from Russia is extremely painful. For Ukraine, developing national identity means writing and rewriting its own past, rejecting many of the mental habits and characteristics it has shared with Russia.
In this regard, Victor Yushchenko—otherwise a totally ineffective President—accomplished one very important thing for Ukraine: He declared the Holodomor, the great Soviet-induced famine of the early 1930s, to be a Ukrainian national tragedy. By doing so, he essentially started the process of writing the first independent history of Ukraine. This process will force Ukrainians to take a fresh look at their historical heroes and villains, and at those who brought Ukraine into Russia and those who fought against it. We Russians will have to accept this revisionism as a natural part of forming both a new state and a new national identity of a country that was once Russia’s colony.
The process of forming a Ukrainian national identity will also unearth another issue. In order to completely extract itself from Russia’s “body”, Ukraine will have to find a new reference point. If it wants to move toward modernity, then its only viable reference point is Europe. But moving toward Europe will mean that Ukraine, whose national identity has still not taken shape, must be prepared to have that very national identity dissolved into the greater European identity. It is unclear whether Ukraine is ready for this change. The former Yugoslav republics, to pick a recent example, managed to reconcile the processes of forming a new state and integrating European civic values—but, to be sure, not without pain.
One thing is clear: Ukraine can no longer attempt to sit in two chairs simultaneously. The delicate line it has walked until now has implied commitments to both the European trajectory and to “special relations’ with Russia. Leonid Kuchma was especially effective at implementing the “two-chair” policy. Viktor Yanukovich has tried to stick with it, but what was possible even a few years back is out of the question now. The Kremlin’s own choice—to pursue the claim that it is a “unique civilization” and thus to reject integration with Europe—is now forcing Kiev to make its own choice: Russia or Europe? Kiev can no longer share a bed with two partners. There is only one way that Ukraine can be allied with Russia: It has to agree to become Russia’s satellite. As the Belarusian example demonstrates, such relations are not without their compensations—not least among them, a guarantee on the ruling elite’s hold on power. But the price that the political elite of a satellite state must pay the Kremlin for these guarantees is steep. The Ukrainian elite has emerged as an independent force in the past twenty years; it is no longer willing to engage Moscow as its external power base. Today Kremlin supporters play a marginal role in the Ukrainian political class, as evidenced, for example, by the case of the Kremlin’s most prominent ally, the leader of the little known “Ukrainian Choice” movement, Viktor Medvedchuk, who has no political influence.
It isn’t clear that Yanukovich can become Ukraine’s Peter the Great by “cutting a window through to Europe.” Perhaps, he wants both to be the Ukrainian Peter the Great and maintain his monopoly on power. But the fact of the matter is that Ukraine can only become a European country by becoming a democracy. Having started on its march toward this goal, Ukraine will also help Russia by depriving it of the temptation to preserve its old power matrix by dragging its neighbors down into a tighter orbit.
Of course, losing Ukraine would strike a heavy blow against Putin’s new model, which places Russia at the center of a new galaxy called the Eurasian Union. Russia’s personalized power regime requires external support in the form of new imperial claims. These claims provide the regime with additional legitimacy, the semblance of greater power, and more public support from Russian society.
Why does Ukraine play such a role of special importance for the self-reproduction of the Russian system? Because including Ukraine in Russia’s orbit helps Russia to maintain its European face. Besides, the Russian political class still considers Ukraine, with Kiev as its capital, to be part of the Russian community—Russia’s “younger brother.” In the eyes of many Russians, Kiev and Kievan Rus are cradles of Russian Orthodoxy and indispensable parts of its origin story. To many, Kiev is as important to Russia as Kosovo and the 14th-century Battle for Kosovo are to the Serbs. This is why the Kremlin has tried so hard to substantiate its claims that Kiev is where the Russian state and official religion originated.
What will become of Putin’s Eurasian Union without Ukraine? With the “younger brother” absent, it would clearly be a defective family. This is precisely why the Kremlin will continue looking for different ways to keep Ukraine in its grips after the November 28–29 Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius.
Finally, what does the struggle for Ukraine’s choice mean for Europe? It is most crucially a test of Europe’s ability to present an attractive civilizational alternative, and a test of its commitment to the policies that will help Ukraine adopt European values. If Europe is serious, these policies must include both the support and the conditionality factors; the latter will work well as Ukraine is preparing for European integration and will weaken once it has been integrated into the European Union. Europe has to understand that Yanukovich and the segment of the Ukrainian elite that he derives his support from may try to play a new imitation game.
Here is how the imitation game would work. Having signed the Association Agreement with the European Union (which would protect Ukraine from Moscow’s claims to some degree), Kiev would try to preserve the semiauthoritarian form of government, thus postponing painful reforms and allowing Yanukovich to manipulate EU rules, much as Russia manipulates the Council of Europe and WTO rules.
Will Europe have sufficient political will not only to protect Ukraine from the Kremlin’s advances but also to offer some positive incentives for Ukraine’s transformation? Or will Europe prefer to avert its eyes as Ukraine falls back into the Kremlin’s suffocating embrace? We will soon know the answer. There is no doubt that Brussels’s policies on Ukraine will testify to the viability of the idea of a United Europe and to Europe’s ability to break free from its current paralysis.
