Tag: Vladimir Putin

The ideologies of war

Hebrew University academic Samuel Barnai said Ukrainian unity extends beyond political parties and politicians, such as President Volodymyr Zelensky (pictured here), and the war is viewed as a great patriotic fight for Ukraine. (photo from president.gov.ua)

In the July 12, 2021, essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Russian President Vladimir Putin declares, “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources. They have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.”

This quote from Putin’s 2021 essay was shared by Prof. Yitzhak Brudny at a March 15 Hebrew University of Jerusalem webinar focused on “the ideological sources of the Russian-Ukrainian War.” The webinar featured Brudny, a professor of political science and history, and Samuel Barnai, an adjunct lecturer at the European Forum and at the HU’s Rothberg International School.

Brudny explained that Putin went even further in his claims just over a year after that essay. On Feb. 21, 2022, three days prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin stated that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, by the Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began almost immediately after the 1917 revolution” and “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.” Later in the speech, Putin points to Russia as being the main enemy in the eyes of the United States and NATO.

According to Brudny, these statements show a denial by Putin of Ukraine’s right to exist without an alliance with Russia and that the current Ukraine state is a “forepost of NATO” run by an “illegitimate, puppet government.” In Putin’s mind, he can justify the war because he sees it as rectifying an historical injustice caused more than a century ago, as well as remedying the security issues posed by a NATO-friendly state as Russia’s neighbour.

Brudny outlined the more recent history of Ukraine, from its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union (during its dissolution) to the present day. Ukraine stands in stark contrast to Russia in that it has accepted democratic electoral processes. Russia, meanwhile, has grown increasingly authoritarian and views a democratic state positioned between it and NATO countries, especially those that were part of the former Eastern Bloc, as a threat.

Barnai spoke to Russia’s military goals at the outset of the current conflict: destruction of Ukrainian air forces, destruction of Ukraine’s military headquarters, the besiegement of the capital Kyiv and the creation of a puppet government.

“Now that we are talking on the 20th day of the war, none of the targets have been reached,” said Barnai. “How can this be explained? In my opinion, one of the main reasons is the consolidation of Ukrainian society. There is widespread support for the president [Volodymyr Zelensky] and the government, which was not even the case two months ago. There is also support for accession to the EU and NATO, even in the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, which were less sympathetic to joining these alliances before,” he said.

In Barnai’s view, the present state of Ukrainian unity extends beyond current political parties and politicians, such as Zelensky, and the war is viewed as a great patriotic fight for Ukraine.

Barnai added that Putin, who has led Russia since Dec. 31, 1999, may have fallen victim to his own propaganda, “that Ukrainian-ness is an artificial tool to cause damage to the Russian people.”

The belief that Ukrainian culture is dangerous and must be eliminated runs deep in the Russian collective consciousness. Barnai gave several historical examples that illustrate this point. There was the suppression of the Ukrainian language by Czar Peter I in 1720. In 1763, Catherine the Great issued a decree banning the teaching of the Ukrainian language at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 1876, Alexander II prohibited the printing of all Ukrainian literature within the Russian Empire. And, in 1914, there was a decree by the last czar, Nicholas II, prohibiting the Ukrainian press. Despite a range of views on other historical matters, these and other Russian leaders shared a common desire to suppress Ukrainian cultural identity.

Barnai explained that there are close ties – historical, religious, and personal – between Russians and Ukrainians, and many have family connections to both countries. He said the real threat to Putin today is not NATO or the European Union, but “the success, even if it is limited success, of political and economic reform in Ukraine.”

This threat, Barnai concluded, plays out in the lack of true participation the Russians have in the political and economic processes of their country. “The main struggle of Putin for the last 22 years,” said Barnai, “has been to deprive Russians of their rights in the political arena.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Ukrainian incidents concerning

In Europe, it has often been dangerous for Jews to be Jews. And Easter in particular has led to frenzied antisemitism, as priests commonly riled up parishioners with a selective retelling of the crucifixion story, after which throngs would emerge from churches and attack Jewish fellow residents.

This is a generalization, of course. Many Easters have passed peacefully in many parts of Europe. But Jew-bashing was a common occurrence with formal and informal sanction. Children sometimes came home from school with arts and crafts mallets to be used symbolically to hammer the Jews on Easter weekend. Predictably in such an environment, on many, many occasions, the hammering was not symbolic.

So it was this past weekend, when firebombs were reportedly thrown through the windows of the main synagogue in the Ukrainian city of Nikolayev. Thankfully, prayers were not taking place at the time and no one was injured. But the traumatized and beleaguered community must certainly have heard echoes of the past in this act of contemporary vandalism and hate.

Ukraine, of course, is the centre of global anxieties, verging as it does on something between a civil war among ethnic Russian and Ukrainian citizens and an incipient full-scale invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has already invaded and annexed Crimea.

It may be an unofficial aspect of our tradition to always expect the worst even while hoping for the best, so it may not have come as a complete surprise to some of us that Easter weekend did not pass without an unfortunate incident. Particularly in the aftermath of another chilling incident in the days before the firebombing. A photocopied sheet was spread throughout parts of Ukraine during Passover declaring that Jews over the age of 16 must register at the (Russian-occupied) government building in Donetsk, paying a $50 registration fee and listing all real estate owned. The echoes of the past this poster elicited were obvious and outrage went viral.

From the start, there was uncertainty about the provenance of the sheet and whether it was being distributed on behalf of an official/ government agency. By the weekend, media were reporting that the poster had been “debunked,” that it was not issued by authorities. If true – because the “debunking” report is no more certain than the original belief that it came from whatever counts as a government in the region now – it would be a bit of a relief. But there should be no great celebration. In recent weeks, as Ukraine and Russia have become more and more conflicted, Jewish citizens of Ukraine have found themselves in an historically familiar and dangerously undesirable position. As has been so often the case in Europe, sides in the conflict are either demanding Jewish allegiance or scapegoating Jews.

Ukraine has a small but overt, visible and thriving neo-Nazi movement – with the support of about one in 10 Ukrainians – which is trouble enough. Putin did not help matters when he suggested recently that Russian influence in Ukraine would be good for the Jews because of rampant antisemitism there. There could hardly be a more dangerous position for Ukrainian Jews than to be seen as a justification for Russian incursion (as if Russia or Putin have records worthy of Jewish admiration).

Leaders of Ukraine’s Jewish community, which traditionally has been more Russian-speaking than Ukrainian-speaking, stood firm with their Ukrainian fellow citizens against Putin’s assertions that Ukraine is a hotbed of Jew-hatred.

“Your certainty about the growth of antisemitism in Ukraine, which you expressed at your press conference, also does not correspond to the actual facts,” rabbis and other leading figures in the community wrote in an open letter to the Russian president. “Perhaps you got Ukraine confused with Russia, where Jewish organizations have noticed growth in antisemitic tendencies last year.”

All these decades and centuries later, our coreligionists still struggle to find a place of welcome in their home countries, amid the nationalist and racial conflicts of Europe. Of course, we should not assume this is a far-away problem. The murders at two Jewish institutions in Kansas City last week is proof that antisemitism exists in our own backyards, as well, and we will continue to watch developments in the region and closer to home with wariness and hope, prepared to speak out and act on behalf of Jews – and anyone – who is endangered.