Ukrainian Chimera: Kiev is building a mythical nation, uprooting everything Russian

The Ukrainian authorities act according to the principles of the Third Reich.

What follows is my English translation of an article, originally in Russian, written by Eduard Popov and published on kp.ru on Wednesday 29th May 2024 and then translated into Italian by Eliseo Bertolasi and published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Sunday 12th January 2025. (Bold emphasis mine, Italics original).

Complete rejection of principles

On 21st and 22nd February 2014, in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, the so-called Euromaidan achieved victory. The leaders who came to power following the coup organised by Western countries represented an alliance of two groups: the pro-Western oligarchs and the so-called Ukrainian nationalists. The former represented the “parade” component at the top, the establishment of the victorious revolution, the latter the street army at the base.

Later, representatives of the first group led the government. The second group formed detachments of volunteers and created a series of noisy but not very influential parties. However, the so-called Ukrainian nationalists also managed to co-opt some of their representatives at the top and, more importantly, their ideology, symbols and slogans became state-sponsored. For example, Bandera's slogan “Glory to Ukraine!” became the official salute of the Ukrainian army.

The coup of 21-22 February 2014 meant more than just a change of political regime in Ukraine. The symbolic history of Soviet Ukraine ended, and something fundamentally different (which we will not define for now) began.

Underlying Soviet Ukraine, which was extended in Ukraine until 21-22 February 2014, was a tacit social agreement. Its basic principles: the territorial borders of a state, artificially created by different cultural and historical regions, were recognised under the guarantee of a certain minimum level of cultural and linguistic rights of the so-called national minorities and the Russians of Ukraine, who constituted a large part of the population and territory of Ukraine.

Euromaidan, as will be shown below, signified the complete rejection of the principles of this social agreement. The first legislative act of the new government was the rejection of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko language law, which guaranteed a minimum of language rights to Russians and national minorities. Thereafter, a total and radical attack on everything Russian and non-Ukrainian began. For what reason?

A coup was needed to make Ukraine anti-Russian. To do this, the population of the country had to be made anti-Russian. The new authorities had a state in their hands, but not yet a nation. Therefore, the main task of the “revolutionary government” was nation-building, not as an increase in the degree of consciousness among indistinct citizens, but the creation of an ideal, fundamentally new nation, according to carefully tested schemes.

The brief existence of the Ukrainian state

The history of the Ukrainian state has a very short period of existence. In post-Maidan Ukraine (i.e. after the 21-22 February 2014 coup), the genesis of the Ukrainian state is traced back to the Ukrainian People's Republic (Ukrainskaya Narodnaya Respublika - UNR). In this regard, the President of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, Andrej Parubij, issued an official statement: he called for the succession and continuation of the current Ukrainian state from the Ukrainian People's Republic to be recognised and fixed in legislation, as well as for the period between the UNR and independent Ukraine to be considered a “Soviet occupation”.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian People's Republic [UNR] did not last long: formally from November 1917 to November 1920. The territory of Galician Rus' became a part of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (Zapadno-Ukrainskaya Narodnaya Respublika - ZUNR), which was proclaimed by force (with the intervention of armed groups, the Ukrainian “Sich” Fusiliers) on 11th November 1918.

The very seat of the capital of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic changed continuously: first Lvov, then Ternopol and Stanislavov (present-day Ivano-Frankovsk).

At the same time, vast territories of the historical Severshchina (the land of Seversk that covered the north-east of modern Ukraine - ed.), of the Slobozhanshchina (historical region in the north-east of Ukraine, which included the entire Kharkov region, northern Lugansk and south-eastern Sumy regions - ed. ), parts of the Don army region (historically the territory of the southern periphery of the Russian Empire, in the middle and lower Don basin - ed.) and the eastern part of the huge historical Novorossiya region (northern Black Sea and Azov regions) became part of the so-called Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (capital - Kharkov).

The head of the newly formed Ukrainian Soviet Republic, Grigory Skrypnik (Soviet Ukraine at that time existed only on paper) declared that “the Donetsk Basin and the Krivoy Rog region constitute the Russian-Southern Autonomous Region of the Ukrainian Republic as part of the Pan-Russian Federation of Soviet Republics”.

That is to say, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks proposed that the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic become part of Soviet Ukraine with broad autonomy and subject to inclusion in Ukraine itself as part of the Pan-Russian Federation, respecting the cultural and linguistic rights of the Russian population of the region.

In fact, the UNR ceased to control the territory of most of Ukraine (including the capital Kiev) long before its official termination as a state - from August 1919, and western Ukraine (or Galicia) - from June 1919 (conquered by Poland).

On 2nd December 1919 the UNR and Poland signed the Warsaw Declaration, according to which the Ukrainian dictator Simon Petlyura renounced Galicia for the benefit of Poland. Therefore, the Great or Naddnepryanskaya Ukraine (lit. “on the land of the Dneper” - ed.) betrayed Galicia, i.e. Western Ukraine.

The mark of fratricide and betrayal

Already in the early days of Ukrainian statehood, the united UNR and ZUNR represented an artificial formation with two Ukrainian peoples: the Galicians (Western Ukraine - Galicia) and the “Little Russians” (historical ethnonym, of Ukrainians in the Russian Empire, from the place-name “Little Russia”, present-day Ukraine - ed.) of Central Ukraine or Naddnepryanskaya Ukraine.

The third people were the Russians, who constituted the ethnocultural majority of the Slobozhanshchina and Novorossiya: the eastern and southern half of the territory of the future Ukrainian SSR, from which modern Ukraine later inherited the territorial boundaries. In other words, the Russians were not a national minority, but one of the peoples who formed the state of Ukraine, together with the “little Russians”-Ukrainians.

In spite of this, it is precisely against such a failed state as the UNR, which bears the mark of the fratricide of Cain and the betrayal of the sister republic of the ZUNR, that the architects of modern Ukrainian statehood appeal today. Ideological blinkers prevent them from relying on the much more successful Soviet experience, within which the formation of Ukraine's territorial borders took place and the creation of the Ukrainian civic nation began.

The historical myth of modern Ukraine is based on the categorical lack of recognition of the Soviet historical heritage. The result is, to use the terminology of Russian historian Lev Gumilev, a chimera - a combination of incompatible elements. The Ukrainian chimera is the utilisation of the acquisitions of the tsarist, imperial and Soviet periods (mainly territorial gains) alongside the total denial of everything Russian and Soviet. As if that were not enough: the Russians and Soviets have been declared existential enemies of Ukraine.

One people

The Ukrainian state, which emerged after the collapse of the USSR on 26th December 1991, inherited from the Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika - USSR) an impressive territory, military, demographic, scientific, technological and economic resources. The USSR was third among the 15 republics of the USSR in terms of territory and second in terms of population. In 1991, almost 52 million people (51,944 thousand) lived on the territory of Soviet Ukraine.

But what did the population of the new Ukrainian state look like? Among the social-humanistic scientific disciplines of the USSR, the methodological approach concerning the “three fraternal Eastern Slavic peoples: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians” (which, by the way, continues to dominate in modern Russian historiography and educational and methodological literature) dominated. According to official data from the last population census of the USSR in 1989, Russians made up 22.07% of the population of the Ukrainian SSR.

According to the results of the 2001 Ukrainian population census, the national composition of the country was as follows: 77.8% Ukrainians, 17.28% Russians. The amount of other peoples did not exceed tenths of a percentage point.

From the above data it is clear, even according to formal indicators, that the number of Russians in Ukraine, who constituted the second largest Ukrainian population (next to Ukrainians) in the composition of the state, had decreased by 4.79% in 12 years (from 1989 to 2001). These figures raise questions about the national policy pursued by the Ukrainian authorities (long before the victory of “Euromaidan”), aimed at significantly reducing the number of Russians in Ukraine. This reduction is due to the increase in the percentage of the Ukrainian ethnic majority.

At the same time, the above-mentioned statistics on the size of the Russian population in Ukraine do not fully reflect ethnocultural and ethnolinguistic realities. In cultural and linguistic terms, the Russians and Ukrainians of both Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine constituted a single people, contrary to the prevailing concept of “three fraternal Eastern Slavic peoples: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians”. The only exceptions were the inhabitants of the western (Galician) regions of Ukraine, who in cultural, linguistic and religious terms were a separate people not only from the Russians (“big Russians”), but also from the “little Russians” (Ukrainians).

The truth about the Russian language

Even after the victory of Euromaidan, the Russian language remained the language of the vast majority of the Ukrainian population, second only to Ukrainian in the western regions of the country. This is confirmed by the assessments of independent experts. Experts from Gallup, Inc. (USA), one of the most authoritative research institutes, conducted a study to determine the language preferences of the inhabitants of Ukraine. The results obtained were published in an official publication of the institute.

According to the results obtained, the percentage of those in Ukraine who prefer to fill out questionnaires in Russian is 83%. Similar data are also provided by a study conducted by the American technology company Google. Google specialists examined the history of requests from the territory of various countries in the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine. As a criterion to determine the prevalence of a particular language, the question was chosen: in which language does the user make a query in Google's search engine? As it turned out, 76% of Ukrainian users use Russian, with Ukrainian coming third at only 10.1%, less than English (13.5%).

The criteria chosen by the authoritative sociological service Gallup, Inc. and the Internet giant Google (both from the USA) provide a more accurate depiction of which language the inhabitants of Ukraine formulate their thoughts in than the sociological studies normally carried out, questions in which the political impact on the following answers of the respondents is manifested in one way or another. Even in the latter cases, an approximately equal distribution of the two languages is indicated: Ukrainian and Russian.

Moreover, the majority of the country's residents are in favour of the return of Russian language teaching in schools throughout the country, or at least in Russian regions. It was this fact, unpleasant for them, that the new Ukrainian authorities had to contend with after the victory of Euromaidan.

Attack on civil rights

The Constitution of Ukraine of 28th June 1996 guarantees the equality of all Ukrainian citizens, regardless of ethnic origin (“There can be no privileges or restrictions on the basis of race, colour, political, religious and other beliefs, gender, ethnic and social background...”).

The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine (ratified by Ukraine on 31 May 1997) “guarantees the right of persons belonging to national minorities, individually or collectively, and other persons belonging to national minorities, to freely express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity and to uphold and develop their culture without being subjected to any attempt at assimilation against their will”, including the implementation of conditions for teaching the Russian language.

The quoted document guarantees the recognition by the Russian Federation of the territorial borders of post-Soviet Ukraine - an issue that caused a wave of criticism from patriotic forces in Russia.

Therefore, Ukrainian legislation and interstate agreements between Ukraine and the Russian Federation recognised the guarantee to the rights for the development of Russian language and culture, at the same time, the Russians of Ukraine were named one of the national minorities of Ukraine.

However, immediately after the victory of Euromaidan in Ukraine, an attack on the Russian language and the Russian national minority as a whole began.

The first legislative step of the new authorities was the abolition of the language law (the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, ratified in 2003 by the Verkhovna Rada), which removed the Russian language from the educational, cultural and information space of Ukraine.

The next step was to deprive Ukrainian Russians of their national minority status. The President of the Verkhovna Rada Stefanchuk explained the objectives of the Ukrainian state policy towards the Russians of Ukraine: “Their (the Russian people's - author's note) rights must be violated”.

In other words, the Russians, who (together with the “little Russians”) constitute the people that shaped the Ukrainian state, are expelled from the legal framework guaranteeing basic civil rights.

Politics in the spirit of the Third Reich

From Ukrainian libraries, books in Russian are confiscated and provocatively thrown into landfills, in Ukrainian cities, streets named after Russian writers are renamed, monuments to Russian writers and historical figures are demolished (monuments to A.S. Pushkin, Catherine II and Suvorov in Odessa, etc.).

Against the backdrop of this policy, in the spirit of the Third Reich, the silence of the authorities of Western countries, who, in fact, put these guardians of Ukrainian ethnic purity in power, seems particularly outrageous. No voices of protest are heard from those EU member states whose compatriots live (as a minority, ed.) on Ukrainian territory. The only exception is Hungary, which strictly and consistently defends the ethnocultural and educational rights of the Magyar (Hungarian) community in the Transcarpathian region.

The language policy of post-Maidan Ukraine is mainly directed against the Russians. However, its targets and victims are also the other “national minorities of Ukraine”.

In turn, the language policy is part of a more general process of building a new Ukrainian nation, one that speaks the “right” language and believes in the “right” Nazi “heroes”. The removal of Russian and other non-Ukrainian languages from the educational and cultural-informational space of post-Maidan Ukraine proceeds in parallel with a similar policy in the field of historical memory and symbolic politics. The formal name of this process is “Ukrainianization”.

Open threat

The linguistic ombudsman of Ukraine Taras Kremin announced on 2nd May 2024 the need to move towards an “attack Ukrainianization”. The very appearance of such a government position testifies to the precariousness of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine, which, despite all kinds of preferences on the part of the government, has long since lost its position to the Russian language. “According to the Ukrainian state language protection officer, a transition from soft (defensive) to attack Ukrainianization is necessary in the country, which will provide additional opportunities and control to ensure the functioning of the Ukrainian language”, states the communication published on the website of the Office of the Language Ombudsman of Ukraine.

On 17th April [2024], Kremin stated that the Russian language should disappear from the screens of Ukrainian TV channels within three months.

It is no coincidence, we are sure, that the ombudsman for the protection of the state language (!) issued a statement on the Ukrainian language attack on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the fire at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, when, according to official data alone, 48 people died: supporters of the Russian world and random people. According to unofficial data - about 300 people.

The words of the ombudsman of the Ukrainian language, spoken on the anniversary of the Odessa “Khatyn”, sound like a blatant threat to the opponents of Ukrainianisation: Russians, Ukrainians of Russian culture and national minorities.

It is not difficult to see in this policy of the post-Maidan Ukrainian authorities a continuation of the tradition of Ukrainian integral nationalism - a form of Nazism. The post-Maidan Ukrainian authorities act according to the principle: “one country - one people - one language”. And, arguably, one führer.

Eduard Popov.

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