The current tensions between Russia and Ukraine have their roots deep in history.
Although, on the face of it, it is a very modern crisis, it’s origins lie in the centuries-old nature of Russian imperialism, the remarkable legacy of the Mongol and Byzantine empires and the scourge of both slavery and genocide.
Russian national territorial identity – partly originating in the ethos of the Czarist imperial system – has always reflected the old ideology that, at its core, the Russian Empire consisted of not one, but three Russias – Little Russia (Ukraine), White Russia (Belarus) and Great Russia (Russia itself).
Indeed, the Czars’ title was ‘Emperor of all the Russias’ – and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church is still called the “Metropolitan of Moscow and of all Rus” (Rus being the original medieval name for the territories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus). Indeed those three ‘Russias’ were also the core constituent republics of the Soviet Union, until its collapse 31 years ago.
Originally, between the 9th and 10th centuries, much of that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus region had been conquered by a group of Swedish Vikings, called the Rus. Those Vikings (together with the majority local Slav population) then created a series of states, the greatest of which was initially Kievan Rus (based in Kiev in what is now Ukraine), which, in time, went on to control the rest of Rus territory (including far away early Moscow).
However, that medieval pan-Russian geopolitical system was changed and terminated economically and militarily by the fortunes of two great non-Russian empires – the Eastern Romans (the Byzantines) and the Mongols.
The demise of Byzantine power in the 13th century massively damaged the lucrative northern-Europe-to-Constantinople trade route – and made Kievan Rus (that route’s main ‘middleman’ beneficiary) economically redundant.
Then the rise of another great empire – the Mongols – finally destroyed medieval Kiev and the already dwindling power of medieval Rus.
Significantly, the Mongol Empire wasn’t just medieval Rus’ final undertaker – but was also, in a sense, ‘modern’ Russia’s midwife.
For the Mongols selected then-insignificant Moscow as their main tax collecting agent in the region – and, as a result, Muscovite Russia grew in power and prestige.
But it was the collapse of the Mongol Empire that sowed the seeds of geopolitical confusion in what had once been the lands of the Rus.
The disintegration of Mongol power led to the emergence of a Rus-origin mega-state (namely the Great Principality of Moscow) in what had been the northern half of the earlier medieval Rus world. But that same Mongol collapse also led to the creation of a Lithuanian empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea (which included most of what is now Ukraine, including Kiev itself).
That ‘empire’ was then absorbed by Poland.
And to complicate things further, a remnant of the Mongol Empire (the Khanate of Crimea) retained control of much of what is now southern Ukraine.
This complex geopolitical picture was then complicated still further when (after a long war in the mid-17th century), Russia acquired Kiev and eastern Ukraine from Poland – and in the late 18th century, when Russia took over central Ukraine (when Russia, Prussia and Austria conspired to abolish and partition the whole of Poland).
All these different conquests and acquisitions (by the Mongols, the Muscovites, the Lithuanians and the Poles) created a new and complex geopolitical reality in which what is now Ukraine and what is now western (ie European) Russia ended up with very different ethnic and cultural make-ups.
The Russian heartland was ethnically and culturally fairly homogenous, while what is now Ukraine gradually became more and more multi-ethnic and multicultural.
The seizure of much of central Ukraine by Russia (at the time of the 1795 partition of Poland) and the subsequent Russification programme ultimately led to the birth of Ukrainian nationalism which was then supressed by the czar’s secret police.
Then, after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Czarist Empire (1917), Ukraine declared independence – but was almost immediately invaded by a Russian army and absorbed into the newly created Soviet Union.
But worse was to come – an event which was to eventually further widen the political and cultural division between Russia and Ukraine.
For, in 1932, Stalin unleashed a genocidal campaign of deliberate starvation against the Ukrainians. Known today as the Holodomor, it was a national catastrophe, which cost around 4 million Ukrainian lives.
Finally, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all the nations within that federation/empire (itself a successor to the czarist Imperial system) were able to opt for independence. They all did – including Ukraine.
But the current Russian government does not fully accept those nations’ right to independence.
In 2008, Russia invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia (and established two proxy statelets in the northern part of that country).
Then, in 2014, Russia did the same against Ukraine (annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and establishing two proxy statelets in south-east Ukraine).
In each case, Russia took advantage of the ethnic complexity of its neighbours to promote instability, support rebellion and seize territory.
But all this is sadly in line with the post-Soviet yet still ‘empire loyalist’ ideology of the current Russian government.
For in 2018 Russian President, Vladimir Putin, declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century – and more alarmingly, indicated that it was the event in Russian history he would most like to reverse.
Indeed just last year he wrote a detailed article (entitled ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians‘) in which he described Russians and Ukrainians as “one people – a single whole”. He stated his belief that the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. We are one people”. In the article he even asserted that it is “crystal clear” that “Russia was robbed” when internal USSR borders were adjusted and redrawn in Soviet times. These communist border changes had detached “from Russia [some of] its historical territories”, he wrote.
Putin sees himself not only as the leader of Russia – but also as the defender of Russians or Russian speakers living in Ukraine and elsewhere – and even as the political champion of Slavs living beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union.
His ability to destabilise Ukraine is further enhanced and encouraged by the fact that, according to a 2021 Ukrainian opinion poll, 41 percent of Ukrainians (including 65 Percent of Ukrainians in the whole of the eastern part of Ukraine) agree with Putin’s belief that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people, belonging to the same historical and spiritual space”.
The relationship between Ukraine and Russia is one of the most fascinating in European history. Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, was the heart of the proto-Russian world (the powerful and prestigious Great Principality of Kiev) back in early medieval times when, by contrast, Moscow was an insignificant settlement on the periphery of that early Russian world.
But the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the rise and fall of the Mongol imperial system, reversed their respective fortunes: Moscow became the heart of the new Russian world (and even came to be known as the ‘Third Rome’ after the 15th century Ottoman conquest of the second Rome (Constantinople), while Kiev languished near the early-modern Russian world’s south-west periphery.
Moscow (the new heart of Russian Orthodox Christianity) grew ever more powerful, while Kiev and the Ukraine were temporarily absorbed into more westerly Catholic states (Lithuania and Poland). And while Moscow expanded southwards and started to build its empire, Kiev and Ukraine were tragically terrorised for centuries by slave-raiders based in the Crimean Khanate.
It is these different histories (and, above all, different perceptions of them) which lurk behind the current tensions between Russia and Ukraine – and which threaten to again plunge part of our continent into the horrors of war.
