Whither Ukraine

You never want to say that things are likely to happen.  Previous to the July crisis in 1914, for example, not many in Europe would have said that a continent-wide cataclysm was in the making -- and boy was it.  Anyone want to claim credit for foreseeing the revolutions of 1989?  That the system (Eastern European communism) was coming apart at the seams might not have been hard to say.  The precise way -- and speed -- at which events unfolded, however, including on the most auspicious of nights on November 9 in Berlin, was awfully difficult to say one saw coming.  Most Berliners themselves didn't.

The scenes from Independence Square have been horrendous.  The center of an important capital has been turned into a war zone and, aesthetically, it's close to looking like a massive bomb crater; think Janin after the Israelis finished their business in 2002.  Tensions which have been present on Europe's eastern borders essentially since the French Revolution -- between Westernizers and nationalists -- have yanked the country in every conceivable direction.  The coalition which brought down the current, or now recently-departed, president, Victor Yanukovych, bridges the democratic left and the nationalist right.  No one likes the Russians -- though opinions about Europe are divided.  The existence of two Ukraine's has been revealed -- the fault lines between which more or less fall along the Russian-speaking, Ukrainian-speaking divide.  It is very difficult to say who is in charge.  It is even hard to say if the planned May 25 election will actually answer any of those questions.  The Orange Revolution seems to have not left the legacy of democratic stability it intended.  Constitutional amendments from 2004 were undone in 2010 -- and are likely be done again in some form or another.

We stand now in one of those bizarre mid-range situations.  Despite significant support in the country's Russian-speaking regions -- where he is now hiding -- Yanukovych's legitimacy is shot.  He won't be able to govern from Kiev, which would be a bit like trying to hold the Roman Empire together without being able to govern from Rome (some tried; the Empire split).  However, three or four contenders pose as the face of the opposition -- and now there's even more, as cause célèbre Yulia Tymoshenko has been released from prison, directly reentering, so it seems, the political fray.  Some years ago, in light of newly-acquired independence from the Soviet Union, a split Ukraine would have seemed like a bizarre concept.  National independence from a state (the USSR) which downplayed senses of nationhood provided sufficient spirit for national unity.  Once nationalism is released, however, it can multiply.  It did so in Yugoslavia.  Chechnya was one of the most violent places in the world for the better part of two decades because of it.  The potential is there, anyway, for finding that what has been discovered is two Ukrainian nations.  One might move towards Europe.  One might seek to survive as an essential Russian annex.

We have here continuing reverberations of 1989 -- revolutions that led, eventually, to the fall of the Soviet regime in 1991 and the flowering of a range of questions about what the precise shape of ethnically, linguistically and sometimes religiously complex areas would be.  Those are haze-inducing situations as not everyone wants to move towards European-style liberal democracy (and isn't a pisser when it turns out that democratic liberalism isn't a universal value?).  The situation has the potential to get worse before it gets better -- that assuming that anyone has any clear standards about what constitutes "worse" or "better" in relation to not only their own political goals, but that of the health of a multilingual and multiethnic nation in general.

There will be no easy answers in Ukraine.  To make intelligent decisions on whither the state, the central actors will have to be clear with each other about what they want; not just what they oppose.  The hope is that, were that to happen, each party would allow the other the opportunity to create the autonomous political spaces they need to operate such that it would be unnecessary for arms to come out again.  The problems come when everyone claims they are speaking on behalf of all.  No one does.  The question is who is legitimately speaking for whom about what, and what the goals of such a speech are.  This means a clear articulation of where one intends to go and with whom -- that so the "with whom" are able to judge whether or not they would like to participate in what is being proposed for them or not.