Yaroslav Hrytsaks historische Biografie der Ukraine

On the night of April 27, 1986, Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi called the Kremlin in Moscow. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is burning around 130 kilometers north of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. It is the biggest possible accident, the situation is out of control.

The head of the Ukrainian communists wants to obtain permission from the headquarters in Moscow to cancel the mass demonstration on May 1st. If he dares to do this, he will be deposed, the Kremlin says.

“The local leadership was not allowed to make independent decisions even on life-threatening issues, and the center had no interest in protecting the local population,” writes Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak in his book “Ukraine. Biography of a beleaguered nation”.

A Russian colony

For him, the Chernobyl case is one of the countless pieces of evidence that Ukraine was a Russian colony. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not even that. In July 2021, he published a long essay entitled “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” with the core thesis: Ukraine does not exist. Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Six months later, he waged war on the neighboring country in order to destroy it as an independent state and reconnect the territory to the Russian Empire.

There are now many excellent publications on Ukrainian history in German. If you only have time to read one of them, you should definitely pick up Hrytsak’s recently published work.

The founding myth is dismantled

The author begins by dismantling the founding myth of the Russian state. “Kievan Rus” never existed; it was an invention of the 19th century. The old “Rus” – Russia or Ukraine? “This debate is nonsensical,” says Hrytsak. Ancient Rus is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. A dispute over this question “makes no more sense than debating whether the Carolingian Empire was French or German.”

Hrytsak’s book brings Ukrainian history back into European history. With numerous cross-references, the author makes visible what most Western Europeans did not want to admit for a long time: Ukraine may not be a separate state, but it is still a nation. This means that it is by no means an isolated case in the history of Europe.

Ukraine repeatedly becomes the plaything of its stronger neighbors. After the fall of power under Mongol rule, Ukraine initially found itself as a subject of the Kingdom of Lithuania-Poland at the end of the Middle Ages.

False hopes for the neighbors

Western influence dominated for two centuries. It also has a downside: namely the renewed suppression of independence. The Ukrainian-Polish conflicts bring Moscow into play. Tensions constantly grow and ultimately lead to the Cossack uprising under Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1648.

He turns to Moscow for help, hoping to form an alliance on equal terms with these neighbors. It turns out to be a fallacy. Moscow is quickly breaking the agreements.

Tsarina Catherine puts an end to hopes of Ukrainian self-determination. Two centuries of imperial forced gravity begin. The feeling of freedom is lost, but it never completely disappears.

Periods of Russian assimilation attempts alternate with periods of undisguised colonial oppression. Hrytsak shows the latter using the example of Russian discrimination against the Ukrainian language.

The attempt to found a state after the First World War and the Russian Revolution was quickly stalled. Once again the law of the strongest prevails, this time it is the Bolsheviks with their concept of a “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”.

It leads Ukraine to the next tragedy. In the first half of the 20th century, Hrytsak calculates, Ukraine lost 50 percent of its male population and 25 percent of its female population. The key words are: civil war, the famines of the early 1920s and 1930/31.

Finally, the German fascists wage war on the region. He passes over the land twice. Once towards Moscow, then back towards Berlin.

The collapse of the Soviet Union ultimately makes Ukraine independent. “But the high expectations gave way to deep disillusionment,” writes Hrytsak. Instead of democracy, an oligarchic system with rampant corruption and nepotism is developing. Society is deeply divided; it is Russian aggression that is leading it into a community of solidarity.

Putin achieves the opposite of what he claims in his essay. The mass murder unleashed by Putin consolidates the Ukrainian nation as a state – or the Russian dictator will ultimately succeed in destroying it. As so often happens, the dialectic of history turns out to be a tragedy.