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Analysis and insight from experts
A spe
ci
collec al
ti
for do on
nors
The historical roots of
the war in Ukraine
March 9, 2022 theconversation.com
Introduction
I
’m old enough to remember when Ukraine was referred to
as “the Ukraine” and just one in the constellation of states
in the USSR. Now, using the Soviet-era manner of refer-
ring to the country is considered both incorrect and problematic
because it refers back to a time when Ukraine and Russia were
joined in a single country.
It’s a small but significant example of how history – some as
recent as the early 1990s and some far older – looms large in
the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. How one views the events of
the past and what they mean for the present and future are very
much in dispute.
At The Conversation, we view history as a crucial way to un-
derstand today’s news – and it’s particularly relevant in our cov-
erage of Ukraine. The articles collected here provide some of
the historical scaffolding to help you make sense of the current
conflict. They include articles (some of which were published
before the actual invasion) on the Cold War, on Vladimir Pu-
tin’s claims of “historical Russia,” and the close ties between the
countries. They’re all written by academics
who are experts in their fields and edited
by journalists with deep experience in
covering international news.
Martin La Monica
Director of Editorial Projects
and Newsletters
Cover photo: A statue commemorating the Ukrainian famine, in which millions died.
Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the opening
ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
The Cold War, modern Ukraine
and the spread of democracy in
the former Soviet bloc countries
By Michael De Groot, Assistant Profes- ing on NATO’s withdrawing its forces
sor of International Studies at Indiana and weapons from former Soviet bloc
University countries, Putin would like to turn back
the clock to the mid-1990s, before NATO
Ukraine has emerged as ground zero of expanded into Eastern Europe
what some pundits have dubbed a new
Cold War between Russia and the West. From my reading of public accounts,
Putin views NATO as a relic that retains
In my view as a Cold War historian, this its Cold War purpose of containing Rus-
comparison distorts the Cold War and sia. In response to NATO expansion,
misrepresents the stakes of the current Putin seeks to carve a buffer zone of his
crisis. own, much as former Soviet leader Jo-
seph Stalin did in response to American
Yet reviewing the Cold War is import- assistance in Europe after World War II,
ant because its legacy shapes Russian and consolidate a Russian sphere of in-
President Vladimir Putin’s policy toward fluence in Eastern Europe.
Ukraine.
While Ukraine was a Soviet republic What was the Cold War?
during the Cold War, it has become the The Cold War was a global struggle of
front line of a post-Cold War tug-of-war the United States and democratic cap-
between Russia and the West. By insist- italism against the Soviet Union and
The Conversation US | 3
communism. It
erupted in the mid-
1940s after both
nations emerged
from World War II
as superpowers and
viewed each other
as existential threats.
During World War
II they had cooper-
ated to defeat Nazi
Germany and Ja-
pan. After the war,
both agreed to oc- President John F. Kennedy discusses the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 with Gen. Curtis
LeMay and other military leaders. Charles Phelps Cushing/ClassicStock/Getty Images
cupy Germany jointly
with Britain and France and wanted to recover from the war. U.S. policymakers
continue the alliance once the fighting feared that the desolate masses might
stopped. But irreconcilable disagree- elect communist governments that
ments about the postwar international would ally with the Soviet Union against
order rose to the surface. the United States.
The Soviet Union asserted control over Winning hearts and minds
Eastern Europe – the nations of Bul- In one of the turning points of the ear-
garia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland ly Cold War, U.S. Secretary of State
and Romania – which the Soviet Army George C. Marshall announced an eco-
had liberated from the Nazis. Stalin sup- nomic assistance initiative for Europe in
ported local communists and intimidat- June 1947. Congress authorized the pro-
ed their opponents, and the countries gram in April 1948. The Marshall Plan,
rarely held free elections. U.S. President as it became known, provided more than
Harry Truman’s administration accused US$12 billion to aid European recon-
Stalin of betraying an agreement at the struction during its three years of oper-
wartime Yalta Conference to respect Eu- ation.
ropean democracy.
But the Marshall Plan’s logic worried the
Yet what terrified U.S. officials most was Western Europeans. Fresh off two trau-
the possibility that Soviet ideology would matic wars against a belligerent Germa-
resonate with the Western European and ny, Western Europeans feared any effort
German people who were struggling to to rebuild western Germany and place it
The Conversation US | 4
on the path to statehood. al communist countries to protect itself
from the West.
Breaking a long-standing tradition of
avoiding entangling alliances, the United The Cold War began in Europe, but it
States joined the North Atlantic Treaty soon spread to Africa, Asia and Latin
Organization in April 1949 to guarantee America. Each superpower feared that
Western Europe’s security against West a setback in a developing country could
Germany, which became independent give the other the advantage in the Cold
the following month. War. Although their forces did not square
off directly, the United States and Soviet
Alarm bells flashed in Moscow. The So- Union confronted each other through
viet Union had lost 27 million soldiers proxies in bloody conflicts such as the
and civilians during the Second World Korean and Vietnam wars.
War. And the United States wanted to
rebuild postwar Germany. The high stakes of the Cold War also
brought the world close to nuclear an-
In response, Stalin ordered the Eastern nihilation. The Cuban Missile Crisis, for
European communists to crack down on example, erupted in October 1962 when
their domestic rivals. Moscow also creat- the Kennedy administration discovered
ed East Germany to counter West Ger- that the Soviets had deployed missiles
many. It now had a buffer zone of loy- in communist Cuba. The United States
and Soviet Union averted nuclear war
after striking a bargain: The Kennedy
administration promised never to invade
Cuba and to withdraw American mis-
siles in Turkey in exchange for the Soviet
removal of the weapons from Cuba.
Soviet Ukraine
Ukraine joined Russia, Belarus and
Transcaucasia, a federation consisting
of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as
the Soviet Union’s founding republics in
December 1922.
Ukraine suffered greatly under Stalin’s
Premier Joseph Stalin and President Harry S. Truman smile rule in the 1930s. A famine in the early
during the 1945 Potsdam Conference, where they negotiated
terms for the end of World War II. Library of Congress/
1930s, known as the Holodomor, killed
Corbis/VCG via Getty Images close to 4 million Ukrainians. Today,
The Conversation US | 5
many Ukrainians refer to the event as an Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and
act of genocide. Lithuania, all of which border Russia.
Thus, when the Nazis invaded the Sovi- NATO declared at its 2008 Bucharest
et Union in June 1941, many Ukrainians Summit that Ukraine and Georgia, also
initially welcomed them. The nationalist former Soviet republics, also would be-
Stepan Bandera collaborated with the come members sometime in the future.
Nazis with the aim of establishing an in- Where NATO has expanded, member-
dependent Ukrainian state. ship in the European Union has usually
come as well.
In a move whose significance contempo-
raries could not foresee, the presidium of In my view, Putin fears Ukraine’s join-
the Supreme Soviet transferred Crimea ing NATO and becoming a springboard
from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. Crimea for the United States to destabilize his
was important because the Soviet Union’s regime. It is also my view that Putin be-
Black Sea Fleet had headquarters there. lieves Washington already uses the cur-
The Soviet Union stationed one-third of rent Ukrainian government as a proxy
its nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. for American interests.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in
December 1991, Ukraine ranked as the The Russians annexed Crimea in March
third-largest nuclear state. 2014, reversing what they claimed was
a historical injustice. They have support-
Ukraine transferred its nuclear weapons ed Ukrainian separatists in the eastern
to Russia in the mid-1990s in exchange part of the country, which is known as
for Russian promises to respect Ukraine’s the Donbass. These moves help prevent
sovereignty. The United States and Brit- Ukraine from joining NATO because
ain were also parties to this agreement, countries are not permitted to join the
known as the Budapest Memorandum. alliance if they have unresolved territo-
rial disputes.
After the fall of communism
The Cold War ended more than three Putin’s fears are not without basis. The
decades ago, when West Germany and momentum of a democratic, prosperous
East Germany unified and communism and secure Ukraine could spill over into
collapsed across Eastern Europe and the Russia and empower domestic challeng-
Soviet Union. es to Putin’s hold on power. By precipi-
tating a crisis over Ukraine, Putin wants
NATO has since expanded to 14 coun- to make sure that never happens.
tries that had been part of the Soviet
bloc. This number includes three former
The Conversation US | 6
The author’s father, Wolodymyr ‘Mirko’ Pylyshenko,
pictured in an ID card at a German displacement
camp for Ukrainians. Provided by Katja Kolcio
Why Ukrainian Americans
are committed to preserving
Ukrainian culture – and national
sovereignty
By Katja Kolcio, Associate Professor of and then Soviet policies banned publi-
Dance and Environmental Studies at cation and education in the Ukrainian
Wesleyan University language.
As a child, I would wait with anticipa- Under Joseph Stalin’s rule, the Sovi-
tion for my parents to return from trips et Union killed at least 750,000 artists,
to the Soviet Union. Often they brought writers, scientists and intellectuals, as
gifts like a few loaves of hearty brown well as regular citizens, between 1936
bread, or a wheel of briny, homemade and 1938. The Great Purge, as it is
cheese. Sometimes they also brought known, has since been well document-
back notebooks, or bits of paper with ed. But Soviet persecution of Ukraini-
verses scribbled in Ukrainian. ans and other Eastern European na-
tionals continued through the rest of the
These were the writings of dissidents 20th century.
and political prisoners whose work was
banned in a systematic attempt to erase Ukrainians who fled felt responsible for
Ukrainian history and political expres- preserving their native country’s intel-
sion. lectual and cultural heritage. My par-
ents were among those in the Ukrainian
Throughout the 20th century, czarist diaspora who did so.
The Conversation US | 7
I am a Ukrainian American and a pro- heritage around the world. Many of
fessor who studies the role of art in soci- these people fled political persecution or
ety; my work is a patient act of political are descendants of those who did.
defiance against centuries of cultural
genocide. The Ukrainian American diaspora in-
cludes over 1.1 million people. Ukrainian
Russia invaded Crimea, a Ukrainian Americans live primarily in big cities like
peninsula, in 2014. New York, Chicago and
Since then, I’ve worked “I am a Ukrainian Philadelphia.
closely with a Ukrainian American and a pro-
nonprofit organization, Participating in
the Development Foun- fessor who studies Ukrainian arts and
dation, to build commu- the role of art in so- culture is a conscien-
nity health and trauma ciety; my work is a tious act of preserving
programs in response to national identity and
the Crimean conflict. patient act of politi- culture for Ukrainian
cal defiance against Americans, including
Russian President Vlad- centuries of cultural my own family.
imir Putin’s escalating
threat to invade Ukraine genocide.” My father arrived in
again does not come as Rochester, New York, in
a surprise to most Ukrainian Americans. 1950 and joined a community that had
Ukrainian language schools, social clubs
U.N. Secretary-General António Gu- and an extensive credit union system
terres said on Feb. 18, 2022, that East- specifically for the Ukrainians.
West tensions are at their highest point
since the Soviet Union’s collapse, as Rus- Members of this community published
sia has amassed between 160,000 and newspapers and created makeshift li-
190,000 troops along Ukraine’s border. braries in the basements of churches and
social halls. They gathered Ukrainian
Many Ukrainian Americans fear for the language publications that were forbid-
lives and safety of family and friends in den under Soviet law. These materials
Ukraine, and for Ukraine’s future. tell the story of people who identify as
Ukrainian but whose history was active-
What it means to be Ukrainian ly suppressed.
American
Ukraine is home to about 42 million peo- Being Ukrainian American often means
ple. There are between 12 million and attending Ukrainian-language school
20 million more people with Ukrainian on Saturdays, joining a Ukrainian choir
The Conversation US | 8
or bandura instrumental ensemble or of the Soviet Union in 1992.
memorizing verses of Ukrainian poetry
and literature. My father, Wolodymyr “Mirko” Py-
lyshenko, was among the Ukrainian
The idea of what it means to be American community leaders who
Ukrainian American has changed since worked to collect Ukrainian literature,
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. through informally circulated materials
known as “samidav,” or “samizdat” in
The Ukrainian diaspora pivoted from Russian.
preserving history to helping build a fu-
ture for Ukraine. Ukrainians are now As an editor and librarian at the Roch-
free to express themselves as Ukraini- ester branch of the Ukrainian Federal
ans without fear of government repri- Credit Union, my father encouraged
sal. Many Ukrainian Americans main- people to write their life stories. When a
tain strong connections with family in Ukrainian American died in Rochester,
Ukraine, and some have returned to live the family knew to bring their memen-
in Ukraine. tos to the credit union, or to him.
Preserving Ukrainian history My father died of COVID-19 in Feb-
Ukrainians first came to the U.S. be- ruary 2020. But in his final years he or-
cause of poverty and lack of land in the ganized his archives. His extensive col-
late 1800s and early 1900s. lection preserving the first 100 years of
Another wave of
Ukrainians followed
between World War
I and World War
II, after the rise of
the Soviet Union in
1922.
More Ukrainians
migrated to the U.S.
following World
War II, which
forcibly displaced
200,000 Ukraini-
ans. The latest wave The author’s father, Mirko Pylyshenko, is pictured on a trip to Ukraine – then part of the Soviet
came after the fall Union – in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Katja Kolcio
The Conversation US | 9
Ukrainian American life in Rochester is ble only in partnership with Russia.”
housed at the University of Rochester,
and his archive of previously banned “For we are one people,” Putin wrote.
materials is now in Dnipro, Ukraine.
Ukraine and Russia share a complicat-
Schools in Ukraine, meanwhile, are ed history, both tracing back to Kyivan
teaching Ukrainian literature, polit- Rus’, the first East Slavic state, which
ical thought and history dating from existed from the 9th century to the mid-
the 1800s. Ukrainian schools previous- 13th century. The territory was centered
ly omitted major events like the Ho- in what is today Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital
lodomor genocide, when Stalin starved city.
an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians to
death in the 1930s. But for Ukrainian Americans, the po-
tential threat of a Russian invasion is
Russia’s attempts to suppress a direct attack on the national identity
Ukrainian identity they and their ancestors have passion-
In part because of their shared history ately defended.
dating back to the 9th century, Russia
sees Ukraine as inherently linked. Putin “Knowing that you have family and
published an article in July 2021, writ- friends that are under the threat of the
ing that Ukraine’s sovereignty is “possi- Russian invasion, you feel obligated to
do something,” said Andrij Baran, pres-
ident of the Ukrainian Congress Com-
mittee of North American Capital Re-
gion, in a Spectrum News 1 article on
Feb. 8, 2022.
Ukrainian Americans have closely fol-
lowed the news, called their congressio-
nal representatives to support Ukraine,
and prayed for peace – while also men-
tally preparing for a potential war.
Roman Bodola, a Ukrainian-born pa-
rishioner in Riverhead, New York, ex-
plained this public interest in a local news
Ukrainian Americans attend a New York City rally on March article on Feb. 16, 2022: “Ukrainian
2, 2014, protesting Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Bilgin people are strong. And they know they
Sasmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images must stay strong and stop the Russians.”
The Conversation US | 10An abandoned fun fair, two kilometers from the Cher-
nobyl power station. Martin Godwin/Getty Images
Famine, subjugation and nucle-
ar fallout: How Soviet experience
helped sow resentment among
Ukrainians toward Russia
By Emily Channell-Justice, Director of Nonetheless, President Vladimir Putin
the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine continues to claim Soviet foundations
Program at Harvard University and
Jacob Lassin, Postdoctoral Research
for what he sees as “historical Russia” –
Scholar in Russian and East European an entity that includes Ukraine.
Studies at Arizona State University
As scholars of that history, we believe
Ukraine and Russia share a great deal in that an examination of Soviet-era poli-
the way of history and culture – indeed cies in Ukraine can offer a useful lens for
for long periods in the past, the neigh- understanding why so many Ukrainians
boring countries were part of larger harbor deep resentment toward Russia.
empires encompassing both territories.
Stalin’s engineered famine
But that history – especially during the Throughout the 19th and early 20th
Soviet period from 1922 to 1991, in centuries, Ukraine was known as the
which Ukraine was absorbed into the breadbasket of Europe and later of the
communist bloc – has also bred resent- Soviet Union. Its rich soil and ample
ment. Opinions of the merits of the So- fields made it an ideal place to grow the
viet Union and its leaders diverge, with grain that helped feed the entire conti-
Ukrainians far less likely to view the pe- nent.
riod favorably than Russians.
The
TheConversation
ConversationUS
US||119After Ukraine was absorbed into the As such, some scholars call the famine
Soviet Union beginning in 1922, its ag- a genocide. In Ukrainian, the event is
riculture was subject to collectivization known as “Holodomor,” which means
policies, in which private land was taken “death by hunger.”
over by the Soviets to be worked com-
munally. Anything produced on those Recognition of the full extent of the Ho-
lands would be redistributed across the lodomor and implicating Soviet leader-
union. ship for the deaths remains an import-
ant issue in Ukraine to this day, with the
In 1932 and 1933, a famine devastated country’s leaders long fighting for global
the Soviet Union as a result of aggres- recognition of the Holodomor and its
sive collectivization coupled with poor impact on modern Ukraine.
harvests.
Countries such as the United States and
Millions starved to death across the So- Canada have made official declarations
viet Union, but Ukraine felt the brunt calling it a genocide.
of this horror. Research estimates that
some 3 million to 4 million Ukrainians But this is not the case in much of the
died of the famine, around 13% of the rest of the world.
population, though the true figure is im-
possible to establish because of Soviet Just as the the Soviet government of the
efforts to hide the famine and its toll. day denied that there were any decisions
that explicitly deprived Ukraine of food
Scholars note that many of the politi- – noting that the famine affected the
cal decisions of the Soviet regime un- entire country – so too do present-day
der Joseph Stalin – such as preventing Russian leaders refuse to acknowledge
Ukrainian farmers from traveling in culpability.
search of food, and severely punishing
anyone who took produce from collective Russia’s refusal to admit that the famine
farms – made the famine much worse for disproportionately affected Ukrainians
Ukrainians. These policies were specific has been taken by many in Ukraine as
to Ukrainians within Ukraine, as well as an attempt to downplay Ukrainian his-
Ukrainians who lived in other parts of tory and national identity.
the Soviet Union.
Soviet annexation of Western
Some historians claim that Stalin’s Ukraine
moves were done to quash a Ukrainian This attempt to suppress Ukrainian na-
independence movement and were spe- tional identity continued during and af-
cifically targeted at ethnic Ukrainians. ter World War II. In the early years of
The Conversation US | 12the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian nation- Church, a self-governing church that
al movement was concentrated in the has allegiance to the pope and was one
western parts of modern-day Ukraine, of the most prominent cultural institu-
part of Poland until the Nazi invasion tions promoting Ukrainian language
in 1939. and culture in these former Polish ter-
ritories.
Before Gemany’s invasion, the Soviet
Union and Nazi Germany entered into Its properties were transferred to the
a secret agreement, under the guise of Russian Orthodox Church, and many
the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression of its priests and bishops were impris-
pact, which outlined German and So- oned or exiled. The destruction of the
viet spheres of influence over parts of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is still
central and east Europe. a source of resentment for many Ukrai-
nians. It stands, we believe as scholars,
After Germany invaded Poland, the Red as a clear instance of the Soviets’ inten-
Army moved into the eastern portion tional efforts to destroy Ukrainian cul-
of the country under the pretense of tural institutions.
stabilizing the failing nation. In reality,
the Soviet Union was taking advantage The legacy of Chernobyl
of the provisions laid out in the secret in Ukraine
protocol. The Polish territories that now Just as disaster marked the early years of
make up western Ukraine were also in- Ukraine as a Soviet republic, so did its
corporated into Soviet Ukraine and Be- final years.
larus, subsuming them into the larger
Russian cultural world. In 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Sovi-
et-run Chernobyl nuclear power in the
At the end of the war, the territories re- north of Ukraine went into partial melt-
mained part of the Soviet Union. down. It remains the worst peacetime
nuclear catastrophe the world has seen.
Stalin set about suppressing Ukrainian
culture in these newly annexed lands It required the evacuation of nearly
in favor of a greater Russian culture. 200,000 people in the areas surround-
For example, the Soviets repressed any ing the power plant. And to this day,
Ukrainian intellectuals who promot- approximately 1,000 square miles of
ed the Ukrainian language and culture Ukraine are part of the Chernobyl Ex-
through censorship and imprisonment. clusion Zone, where radioactive fallout
remains high and access is restricted.
This suppression also included liqui-
dating the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Soviet lies to cover up the extent of the
The Conversation US | 13disaster – and missteps that would have been left to attend to the thousands of
limited the fallout – only compounded citizens who have chronic illnesses and
the problem. Emergency personnel were disabilities as a result of the accident.
not given proper equipment or training The legacy of Chernobyl looms large in
to deal with the nuclear material. Ukraine’s recent past and continues to
define many people’s memory of living
It resulted in a heavy death toll and a in the Soviet era.
higher than normal incidence of radia-
tion-induced disease and complications Memories of a painful past
such as cancer and birth defects among This painful history of life under Soviet
both former residents of the region and rule forms the backdrop to resentment
the workers sent in to deal with the di- in Ukraine today toward Russia. To
saster. many Ukrainians, these are not merely
stories from textbooks, but central parts
Other Soviet republics and European of people’s lives – many Ukrainians are
countries faced the fallout from Cher- still living with the health and environ-
nobyl, but it was the authorities in mental consequences of Chernobyl, for
Ukraine who were tasked with organiz- instance.
ing evacuations to Kyiv while Moscow
attempted to cover up the scope of the The presence of Russian soldiers on
disaster. Ukraine’s soil serves as a reminder of
past attempts by its neighbor to crush
Meanwhile, independent Ukraine has Ukrainian independence.
Why church conflict in Ukraine
reflects historic Russian-
Ukrainian tensions
By J. Eugene Clay, Associate visions of the relationship between the
Professor of Religious Studies at Ukrainian and the Russian peoples.
Arizona State University
Two Orthodox churches
Two different Orthodox churches claim The religious history of Russia and
to be the one true Ukrainian Orthodox Ukraine has fascinated me since I first
Church for the Ukrainian people. The visited Kyiv on a scholarly exchange in
two churches offer strikingly different 1984. In my current research I contin-
The Conversation US | 14ue to explore the history of Christianity Bartholomew formally recognized the
and the special role of religion in Eur- Orthodox Church of Ukraine as a sep-
asian societies and politics. arate, independent and equal member
of the worldwide communion of Or-
Since Russia invaded Ukraine and an- thodox churches.
nexed Crimea in 2014, relations be-
tween the two countries have been es- Completely self-governing, the Or-
pecially strained. These tensions are thodox Church of Ukraine was the
reflected in the very different approach- culmination of decades of efforts by
es of the two churches Ukrainian believers who
toward Russia. “The Orthodox Church wanted their own na-
of Ukraine has over tional church, free from
The older and larg- any foreign religious au-
er church is the 7,000 parishes in 44 di- thority. As an expression
Ukrainian Orthodox oceses. It regards Rus- of Ukrainian spiritual
Church – Moscow sians and Ukrainians independence, this new
Patriarchate. Accord- self-governing Ortho-
ing to Ukrainian gov- as two different peo- dox Church of Ukraine
ernment statistics, ples, each of whom de- has been a challenge to
this church had over serves to have its own Moscow. In Orthodox
12,000 parishes in terminology, the Ortho-
2018. A branch of separate church.” dox Church of Ukraine
the Russian Orthodox claims autocephaly.
Church, it is under the spiritual author-
ity of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Patri- Unlike the Catholic Church, which
arch Kirill and his predecessor, Patriarch has a single supreme spiritual leader
Aleksii II, both have repeatedly empha- in the pope, the worldwide Orthodox
sized the powerful bonds that link the Church is divided into 14 universally
peoples of Ukraine and Russia. recognized, independent, autocepha-
lous or self-headed churches. Each au-
By contrast, the second, newer church, tocephalous church has its own head,
the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, cel- or kephale in Greek. Every autocepha-
ebrates its independence from Moscow. lous church holds to the same faith as
With the blessing of the Ecumenical Pa- its sister churches. Most autocephalies
triarch Bartholomew of Constantino- are national churches, such as the Rus-
ple, a solemn council met in Kyiv in De- sian, Romanian and Greek Orthodox
cember 2018, created the new church, churches. Now, the Orthodox Church
and elected its leader, Metropolitan of Ukraine is claiming its place among
Epifaniy. In January 2019, Patriarch the other autocephalous churches.
The Conversation US | 15The Orthodox Church of Ukraine has emphasizes the unity that it enjoys with
over 7,000 parishes in 44 dioceses. It re- the Russian Orthodox believers.
gards Russians and Ukrainians as two
different peoples, each of whom de- By contrast, the Orthodox Church of
serves to have its own separate church. Ukraine is independent of any other
religious body. For the church’s propo-
The independent Orthodox nents, this independence allows it to de-
Church of Ukraine velop a unique Ukrainian expression of
The chief issue separating the Orthodox Christianity.
Church of Ukraine from the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarch- A common Orthodox Christian
ate is their relationship to the Russian tradition
Orthodox Church. In both Russia and Ukraine, Orthodox
Christianity is the dominant religious
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – tradition. According to a 2015 Pew sur-
Moscow Patriarchate has substantial vey, 71% of Russians and 78% of Ukrai-
autonomy in its internal affairs. Ulti- nians identified themselves as Orthodox.
mately, however, it is subordinate to Religious identity remains an important
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who must cultural factor in both nations.
formally confirm its leader. The church Orthodox Christians in both Russia and
Ukraine trace their
faith back to the
conversion in A.D.
988 of the Grand
Prince of Kyiv.
Known as Vlad-
imir by Russians
and Volodymyr by
Ukrainians, the pa-
gan grand prince
was baptized by
missionaries from
C o n s t a n t i n o p l e,
the capital of the
Byzantine Empire.
Kyiv became the
An Orthodox priest takes part in a rally in protest against an official visit of Ecumenical Patriarch most important re-
Bartholomew I of Constantinople to Kyiv, Ukraine in August 2021. Anna Marchenko\TASS via ligious center for
Getty Images
The Conversation US | 16the East Slavs. church, and it enjoyed the recognition
of the worldwide Orthodox communi-
Destroyed in 1240 by the Mongols, ty. However, it was and is subject to the
Kyiv fell into decline even as its north- Patriarch of Moscow – an unacceptable
ern neighbor, Moscow, became increas- status for many Ukrainians.
ingly powerful. By 1686, Russia had
conquered eastern Ukraine and Kyiv. Two other churches, the Ukrainian Au-
In that year, the patriarch of Constan- tocephalous Orthodox Church and the
tinople formally transferred his spiritual Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Pa-
authority over Ukraine to the patriarch triarchate, had failed to gain recognition
of Moscow. from other Orthodox churches.
In the 20th century, a growing national- Support for Ukrainian church
ist movement demanded Ukrainian in- The ecumenical patriarch of Constanti-
dependence for both the church and the nople, Bartholomew I, supported Poro-
state. Although Ukraine became an in- shenko’s project. As the leading bishop
dependent country in 1991, its only uni- of the ancient capital of the Byzantine
versally recognized national Orthodox Empire, Bartholomew enjoys first place
Church remained subject to Moscow. in honor among all of the heads of the
Orthodox churches.
Some Ukrainian Orthodox Christians
tried to create an autocephalous church
in 1921, 1942 and 1992. These efforts
largely failed. The churches that they
formed were not recognized by the
worldwide Orthodox community.
Ukrainian autocephaly
In April 2018 Petro Poroshenko, then
the president of Ukraine, again tried to
form an autocephalous Ukrainian Or-
thodox Church. No fewer than three
different churches claimed to be the true
Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Poros-
henko hoped to unite these rival bodies.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – A prayer service of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, held on
Moscow Patriarchate was the largest the hill of St. Volodymyr in the center of Kyiv, Ukraine, in
July 2019. Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Conversation US | 17Although Eastern Orthodox Christiani- ple who suffered from the Russian ag-
ty has no clear method of creating a new gression.”
autocephalous church, Bartholomew
argued that he had the authority to Two visions of history
grant this status. Because Ukraine had Today, the two major rival expressions
originally received Christianity from the of Orthodoxy in Ukraine reflect two dif-
Byzantines, Constantinople was Kyiv’s ferent historical visions of the relation-
mother church. ship between Russians and Ukrainians.
For the Moscow Patriarchate, Russians
In December 2018 a unification council and Ukrainians are one people. There-
formally dissolved the other branches of fore a single church should unite them.
Orthodoxy in Ukraine and created the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In Janu- President Vladimir Putin of Russia has
ary 2019, Bartholomew signed a formal made this very argument in a recent
decree, or tomos, proclaiming the new essay. He characterizes the Orthodox
church autocephalous. Church of Ukraine as an attack on the
“spiritual unity” of the Russian and
Support and rejection Ukrainian peoples.
So far, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine
has received recognition from four oth- The Orthodox Church of Ukraine holds
er autocephalous Orthodox churches. a very different view. In an interview with
The churches of Constantinople, Alex- the British Broadcasting Corp., Metro-
andria, Greece and Cyprus have each politan Epifaniy firmly rejected “Rus-
welcomed the new church. sian imperial traditions.” As a separate
people with a unique culture, Ukraini-
Three other autocephalous churches ans require an independent church.
have explicitly rejected the new church.
The Moscow Patriarchate even broke The future of the Orthodox Church of
communion with Constantinople over Ukraine is unclear. It enjoys the support
its role in creating the new church. of several of its sister churches, but faces
fierce opposition from Moscow. For now,
Nadieszda Kizenko, a leading histo- it remains a source of controversy be-
rian of Orthodoxy, has said that Bar- tween Russia and Ukraine.
tholomew has shattered Orthodox unity
to create a church of dubious legitimacy.
By contrast, the noted theologian Cyril
Hovorun greeted the Orthodox Church
of Ukraine as a positive “demonstration
of solidarity with … the Ukrainian peo-
The Conversation US | 18A historian corrects misunder-
standings about Ukrainian and
Russian history
The first casualty of war, says historian Ron- ernments as well. At the same time, he
ald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, questions the historical formation of the
“it is what is left out.” modern Ukrainian state, which he says
was the tragic product of decisions by
Russian President Vladimir Putin began a former Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin,
full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. He
and many in the world are now getting a crash also questions the sovereignty and dis-
course in the complex and intertwined history of tinctive nation-ness of Ukraine. While
those two nations and their peoples. Much of he promotes national identity in Russia,
what the public is hearing, though, is jarring to he denigrates the growing sense of na-
historian Suny’s ears. That’s because some of it tion-ness in Ukraine.
is incomplete, some of it is wrong, and some of
it is obscured or refracted by the self-interest or Putin indicates that Ukraine by its very
the limited perspective of who is telling it. We nature ought to be friendly, not hostile,
asked Suny to respond to a number of popular to Russia. But he sees its current gov-
historical assertions he’s heard recently. ernment as illegitimate, aggressively na-
tionalist and even fascist. The condition
By Ronald Suny, Professor of History
and Political Science, at University of for peaceful relations between states,
Michigan
he repeatedly says, is that they do not
threaten the security of other states. Yet,
Putin’s view of Russo-Ukrainian as is clear from the invasion, he presents
history has been widely criti- the greatest threat to Ukraine.
cized in the West. What do you
think motivates his version of Putin sees Ukraine as an existential
the history? threat to Russia, believing that if it en-
ters NATO, offensive weaponry will be
Putin believes that Ukrainians, Belar- placed closer to the Russian border, as
usians and Russians are one people, already is being done in Romania and
bound by shared history and culture. Poland. It’s possible to interpret Putin’s
But he also is aware that they have be- statements about the historical genesis
come separate states recognized in in- of the Ukrainian state as self-serving
ternational law and by Russian gov- history and a way of saying, “We creat-
The Conversation US | 19ed them, we can take them back.” But I Ukrainian. When in 2014 the Maidan
believe he may instead have been mak- revolution in Kyiv moved the country
ing a forceful appeal to Ukraine and the toward the West and Ukrainian nation-
West to recognize the security interests alists threatened to limit the use of the
of Russia and provide guarantees that Russian language in parts of Ukraine,
there will be no further moves by NATO rebels in the Donbas violently resisted
toward Russia and into Ukraine. Iron- the central government of Ukraine.
ically, his recent actions have driven
Ukrainians more tightly into the arms After months of fighting between
of the West. Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian reb-
el forces in the Donbas in 2014, regular
The Western position is that the Russian forces moved in from Russia,
breakaway regions Putin recog- and a war began that has lasted for the
nized, Donetsk and Luhansk, are last eight years, with thousands killed
integral parts of Ukraine. Russia and wounded.
claims that the Donbass region,
which includes these two prov- Historical claims to land are always con-
inces, is historically and rightful- tested – think of Israelis and Palestinians,
ly part of Russia. What does his- Armenians and Azerbaijanis – and they
tory tell us? are countered by claims that the majori-
ty living on the land in the present takes
During the Soviet period, these two precedence over historical claims from
provinces were officially part of Ukraine. the past. Russia can claim Donbass with
When the USSR disintegrated, the for- its own arguments based on ethnicity,
mer Soviet republic boundaries be- but so can Ukrainians with arguments
came, under international law, the legal based on historical possession. Such ar-
boundaries of the post-Soviet states. guments go nowhere and often lead, as
Russia repeatedly recognized those bor- can be seen today, to bloody conflict.
ders, though reluctantly in the case of
Crimea. Why was Russia’s recognition of
Donetsk and Luhansk People’s
But when one raises the fraught question Republics as independent such
of what lands belong to what people, a pivotal event in the conflict?
a whole can of worms is opened. The
Donbass has historically been inhabited When Putin recognized the Donbass
by Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and oth- republics as independent states, he se-
ers. In Soviet and post-Soviet times, the riously escalated the conflict, which
cities were largely Russian ethnically turned out to be the prelude to a full-
and linguistically, while the villages were scale invasion of Ukraine. That invasion
The Conversation US | 20is a hard, harsh signal to the West that was a landmine that eventually blew up
Russia will not back down and accept the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian lan-
the further arming of and placing of guage was never banned in the USSR
weaponry in Ukraine, Poland and Ro- and was taught in schools. In the 1920s,
mania. The Russian president has now Ukrainian culture was actively promot-
led his country into a dangerous preven- ed by the Leninist nationality policy.
tive war – a war based on the anxiety
that sometime in the future his country But under Stalin, Ukrainian language
will be attacked – the outcome of which and culture began to be powerfully
is unpredictable. undermined. This started in the early
1930s, when Ukrainian nationalists were
A New York Times story on Pu- repressed, the horrific “Death Famine”
tin’s histories of Ukraine says killed millions of Ukrainian peasants,
“The newly created Soviet gov- and Russification, which is the process
ernment under Lenin that drew of promoting Russian language and cul-
so much of Mr. Putin’s scorn ture, accelerated in the republic.
on Monday would eventually
crush the nascent independent Within the strict bounds of the Soviet
Ukrainian state. During the So- system, Ukraine, like many other na-
viet era, the Ukrainian language tionalities in the USSR, became a mod-
was banished from schools and
ern nation, conscious of its history, lit-
its culture was permitted to exist
erate in its language, and even in puffy
only as a cartoonish caricature
of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants permitted to celebrate its ethnic
pants.” Is this history of Soviet culture. But the contradictory policies
repression accurate? of the Soviets in Ukraine both promot-
ed a Ukrainian cultural nation while re-
Lenin’s government won the 1918-1921 stricting its freedoms, sovereignty and
civil war in Ukraine and drove out for- expressions of nationalism.
eign interventionists, thus consolidating
and recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet History is both a contested and a sub-
Socialist Republic. But Putin is essen- versive social science. It is used and mis-
tially correct that it was Lenin’s poli- used by governments and pundits and
cies that promoted Ukrainian statehood propagandists. But for historians it is
within the USSR, within a Soviet em- also a way to find out what happened in
pire, officially granting it and other So- the past and why. As a search for truth,
viet republics the constitutional right to it becomes subversive of convenient
secede from the Union without condi- and comfortable but inaccurate views
tions. This right, Putin angrily asserts, of where we came from and where we
might be going.
The Conversation US | 21Small stones placed on the photos of victims of the 1941 massacre
where the Nazi killed tens of thousands of Jews during WWII, in
Kyiv, Ukraine. AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
Putin’s claim to rid Ukraine of
Nazis is especially absurd given
its history
By Jeffrey Veidlinger, Professor of His- Ukraine’s new language laws have up-
tory and Judaic Studies of University
set some minorities, independent news
of Michigan
media have uncovered no evidence of
genocide against Russian speakers. In
Russian President Vladimir Putin justi- fact, as the historian Timothy Snyder
fies his war on Ukraine as a peacekeep- has pointed out, Russian speakers have
ing mission, a “denazification” of the more freedom in Ukraine than they
country. have in Russia, where Putin’s authori-
tarian government routinely suppress-
In his address to the Russian people on es political dissent. And while far right
Feb. 24, 2022, Putin said the purpose groups have been growing in Ukraine,
was to “protect people” who had been their electoral power is limited.
“subjected to bullying and genocide …
for the last eight years. And for this we As the author of a recently published
will strive for the demilitarization and book on anti-Jewish violence in Ukraine
denazification of Ukraine.” and a historian of the Holocaust, I know
why the accusations of Nazism and
The victims of the genocide claimed by genocide have resonance in Ukraine.
Putin are Russian speakers; the Nazis But I also understand that despite epi-
he referenced are the elected represen- sodic violence, Ukrainian history offers
tatives of the Ukrainian people. While
The Conversation US | 22a model of tolerance and democratic The fact that Zelenskyy is the grandson
government. of a Holocaust survivor and was raised
in what he told The Times of Israel was
Ukraine’s Jewish leadership “an ordinary Soviet Jewish family” was
First, it is worth pointing out that barely noted during the election. “No-
Ukraine today is a vibrant, pluralistic body cares. Nobody asks about it,” he
democracy. Ukrainian President Volo- remarked in the same interview. Nor did
dymyr Zelenskyy won a five-year term Ukrainians seem to mind that the prime
in the 2019 presidential election with a minister at the time of Zelenskyy’s elec-
landslide majority, defeating 39 candi- tion, Volodymyr Groysman, also had a
dates. His Servant of the People party Jewish background.
then swept the parliamentary elections
in July 2019, winning 254 seats in the For a brief period of time, Ukraine was
450-seat chamber, becoming the first the only state outside of Israel to have
majority government in the history of both a Jewish head of state and a Jewish
the modern Ukrainian state. Zelenskyy head of government. “How could I be a
was well-known as a comedian and star Nazi?” Zelenskyy asked in a public ad-
of the popular sitcom “Servant of the dress after the Russian invasion began.
People,” from which his party’s name “Explain it to my grandfather.”
was derived.
The pogroms
against Jews
Sporadic episodes
of violence against
Jews, or pogroms,
began well before
the Holocaust. In
1881, for instance,
after the assassi-
nation of Tsar Al-
exander II, ordi-
nary churchgoers,
laborers, railway
workers and sol-
diers attacked Jew-
ish-owned shops,
mills and canteens,
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking at a news conference. AP Photo/Efrem Lu-
katsky resulting in the
The Conversation US | 23deaths of dozens of Jews in what was Nazis or were exploited as slave labor-
then considered the south of Russia, but ers. The occupiers treated Ukrainian
is now Ukraine. During another wave lands as little more than Lebensraum,
of violence following the Revolution of living space for ethnic Germans.
1905, workers, peasants and soldiers,
egged on by Russian right-wing para- A pluralistic state
military groups, murdered 5,000 Jews in Forgotten in this history is the period
the region. between 1917 and 1919 when an inde-
pendent Ukrainian state offered a dif-
During the unrest that followed the ferent model of multiculturalism and
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, about pluralism. The Ukrainian state that
100,000 Jews died as a declared its indepen-
result of attacks perpe- “Putin’s selective tell- dence from Russia in
trated against them by the aftermath of the
soldiers fighting to re-
ing of the past exag- 1917 Revolutions, envi-
store a united Russia, as gerates the legacy of sioned a Ukraine for all
well as by the armies of Nazism in Ukraine ethnicities and religious
the newly established groups living within its
Ukrainian and Polish
while ignoring the territory.
states. state’s historic strug-
gle for pluralism and One of its first acts was
Finally, during the Sec- passing the Law on
ond World War, Ger-
democracy. There is a National Autonomy in
man soldiers murdered good reason for this: January 1918, which
1.5 million Jews in the he fears democracy allowed each of the
areas that are now major ethnic minori-
Ukraine, often with
more than he fears ty groups – Russians,
the collaboration of Nazism.” Jews, and Poles – broad
Ukrainian militias es- autonomous rights, in-
tablished in the diaspora and with the cluding the right to use their own lan-
help of local auxiliary police. The role guage.
of ethnic Ukrainians in the Holocaust
remains contentious in Ukraine today, The cabinet included a Secretariat of
where nationalist heroes who collabo- National Affairs, with vice-secretariats
rated with the Nazis continue to be hon- for Russians, Jews and Poles, and, brief-
ored. ly in 1919, even a Ministry of Jewish
Affairs. The legislative body, as well, in-
Yet at the same time, millions of non-Jew- cluded proportional representation from
ish Ukrainians lost their lives under the each of the national minorities. The
The Conversation US | 24state issued declarations and currency Ukrainian state into the Soviet Union.
printed in four languages: Ukrainian,
Russian, Polish and Yiddish. Putin’s selective telling of the past ex-
aggerates the legacy of Nazism in
However, this state, hailed by Jews Ukraine while ignoring the state’s his-
around the world as a model for the toric struggle for pluralism and democ-
new nation states then emerging in east- racy. There is a good reason for this:
ern and central Europe, never managed he fears democracy more than he fears
to hold the capital for more than a few Nazism.
months at a time. By April of 1919, the
government was being run from a mov-
ing train and could barely claim more
land than the tracks beneath it.
From its inauguration in January 1918,
Ukraine found itself enmeshed in a
bloody war on multiple fronts. The So-
viet Red Army attacked it from the east,
while Moscow sought to ignite Bolshe-
vik revolutions throughout Ukraine.
A Russian White Army led by officers
from the old tsarist army attacked from
the south, hoping to reestablish a ver-
sion of the Russian Empire. From the
west, the army of the newly established
Polish Republic attacked with the goal
of restoring historic Poland’s borders.
At the same time, a range of insurgent
fighters and anarchists formed militias
to seize land for themselves. In the midst
of this chaos, the dream of a pluralistic
state devolved into inter-ethnic violence.
In March 1921, the war ended with the
Treaty of Riga, incorporating much of
the territory claimed by the independent
The Conversation US | 25You can also read
