Ukraine’s “Older” Brother

By Volodymyr Kish

Putin’s recent re-election to the post of President of the Russian Federation bodes nothing but ill for Ukraine.  As the latest “tsar”, Putin will undoubtedly continue in his efforts to try and bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, continuing an imperialistic policy that has lasted some seven centuries.

The enmity between Russia and Ukraine is obviously nothing new, and reflects a deep-seated psychological neurosis that infects the Russian psyche and causes them to conduct a self-destructive foreign policy that makes them the pariah of the civilized world.  Russia’s rulers have always been paranoid about their neighbours and none more so than Ukraine. 

For centuries they have imposed a harsh rule on their so-called “little brothers”, a rule that has caused the death of millions upon millions of Ukrainians.  The irony behind it all is that historically, Ukrainians can legitimately claim to be the “older brother” in this destructive relationship.  “Russia” sprang up from the powerful Kyivan Rus State in the aftermath of the Mongolian invasions in the Thirteenth Century. Prior to that, the fledgling Slavic principality of Suzdal-Vladimir was just a primitive northern backwater that eventually evolved into a Russian state (Muscovy) centred on Moscow. Political power for the then largest state in Europe was centered in Kyiv, while the Metropolitan of Kyiv ruled over all of Christendom north of the Black Sea.

After the Mongols laid waste to Kyiv in the mid Thirteenth Century, the Kyivan Rus State essentially disintegrated and the Metropolitan of Kyiv moved his seat from Kyiv north to the safety of the city of Vladimir. In the Fourteenth Century, Muscovy gained dominance of the northern principalities and in 1328, the Metropolitan of “all Rus” established his seat in Moscow.

While the remnants of the Kyivan Rus State struggled to maintain sovereignty against the continuous incursions of the Tatars, Turks and Poles, the Muscovites grew in strength and began an aggressive policy of conquest and expansion that eventually saw the creation of a vast Russian empire.

Of course, most Russians would not recognize this historical narrative, as they have indulged in a long standing effort at rewriting history that insists that Kyiv and the Kyivan Rus State were always historically Russian, and that Ukrainians are but a culturally inferior offshoot of the Russian people.

And it is this that probably best explains the Russian “neuroses” that I alluded to earlier.  In a recent editorial, journalist Peter Worthington, who once worked as a reporter based in Moscow, recounts how he once asked a Russian to explain the historical hostility between Russians and Ukrainians.  The colleague explained that Ukrainians obviously had cause seeing how Stalin had killed so many million Ukrainians and attempted to destroy the Ukrainian language and culture. This was particularly galling in that most Ukrainians felt that they were “instinctively more intelligent, more civilized, and more efficient than Russians.”  Peter then noted that explained the Ukrainian feelings, but not why the Russians held such a grudge. That’s easy replied the colleague - “It’s because Russians also feel Ukrainians are more capable than they are.”

The essence of it all lies in a historical cultural inferiority complex, a feeling of backwardness that can only be compensated by bullying all those around you.  This was particularly recognized by Russia’s Tsar Peter I, who tried desperately to drag the industrially, educationally, scientifically and socially primitive Russians into some semblance of parity with the more advanced Western Europeans at the turn of the 18^th Century.  Although he did succeed in making Russia the most powerful military state of that era, the Russians have never quite been capable of gaining the respect of the rest of the world as a modern, progressive and civilized state.  A never-ending series of tyrants and dictators, coupled with an oppressive imperialistic foreign policy has earned them the disdain of the Free World.  We may fear their military might, but until they start behaving like a mature, democratic state, they will always be looked upon as a reactionary, backward country.