How did the fall of the Soviet Union cause the current crisis?
A consideration of how borders and states were formed is instructive
In the Western corporate media, they often go on and on about how Russia attacked a sovereign nation-state (neglecting the fact that Westerners themselves support attacks upon sovereign nation-states, like Afghanistan and Iraq). They act as though national self-determination is in imminent peril as a result of Russian action in Ukraine. They go on and on about how intolerant Russian leaders are towards small minorities in the region. Yet do these Western commentators ask how these nation-states were formed in the first place? And did they ask about whether these states, formed on the basis of nationality but the borders of which weren’t drawn on such a basis, have ideological contradictions that endanger their integrity? Let’s consider these questions in light of the history of the region, in particular the Soviet Union.
Little do outsiders know that these state boundaries were not formed on the basis of national self-determination but were always subsumed to the designs of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union wasn’t formed on the basis of nationality but was formed on the basis of Marxist-Leninist ideology that incorporated aspects of multicultural policies. Thus Soviet propaganda was broadcast in all the languages of the Union, even in the languages of the small minorities in Siberia. Thus conformity didn’t depend upon your national culture or language.
Stalin and other Soviet leaders didn’t always draw the boundaries of the Soviet Republics according to national self-determination either. Boundaries were always subject to change based upon the larger interests of the Soviet Union. You can see this based on how strange or bizarre the borders seem when it comes to the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus. There many, many, enclaves, some of which are completely cut off from the rest of the national territory.
This map shows the remnant of the policies of Stalin and other Soviet officials, who imposed artificial Tajik-Uzbek borders according to anti-nationalist Soviet ideology.
Not only were the borders of certain political administrative districts sometimes bizarre and contrary to good geographical sense, but the borders were porous, as the Soviet Union was basically considered one country. Their main population, Russians, were also sent to develop the outer regions of the Soviet Union, and also migrated on their own accord. This migration and development led to millions upon millions of Russians all over Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. All of this cohabitation was reliant upon Soviet ideology and policy to make it work.
As the Soviet Union was collapsing, Boris Yeltsin himself realized this reality, and he often spoke publicly about the need to redraw the political boundaries based upon the layout of the national populations as they were laid out at the time. Either because non-Russian nationalists had the upper hand according to the dictates of the zeitgeist or because it was assumed that everyone would get along just as well as during the Soviet era—either way those concerns were quickly drowned out.
When we fast-forward a decade or two in the case of Ukraine, moreover, we see how this lack of political adjustment led to some brutally confrontational contradictions. As Ukrainian nationalism became evermore fervent in flavor and method, with Stepan Bandera and German National Socialism inflecting the national ideology more and more, their imposition of themselves upon the cultural and ancestral Russians became evermore severe. They removed element after element of Russian culture and practice, and they attempted to reverse the use of the Russian lingua franca in the country, reflecting a sheer intolerance that threatened the balance that was struck during the Soviet era. The social and cultural realities became evermore unstable.
Russia in 1914. As you can see, “Ukraine” was part of it. The most fervent Ukrainian nationalists of the Twentieth Century weren’t even born in those boundaries, but were born in the territory that had been ruled by the Austo-Hungarian Empire, north of the Carpathian Mountains.
As this escalated into political confrontations in the streets, jailing Russian political opponents, and banning ideological and ethnic opposition, the tolerance of Russians both inside and outside of Ukrainian territory reached a breaking point. They questioned whether the boundaries were sustainable when the Soviet policies and ideology that sustained the political boundaries had fallen. Faced with increasing hostility from Ukrainian nationalists, Russians there began to oppose the boundaries that had no more ideology to support the binational reality between Russians and Ukrainians.
As can be seen, this reality is not one of Russia disrespecting Ukrainian national self-determination, but of nationalist ideologies that didn’t fit the demographic realities within the borders they inherited from Soviet Communist officials. Western leaders and commentators may want to cover up the fact that the ideologies they have been supporting in Ukraine, either implicitly or otherwise, have been a brutal imposition against the former Soviet populations. But current events are bringing that reality to stark relief. Ukrainian national ideology was bound to have an unsustainable life, but Western leaders and commentators will try to keep the Frankenstein monster alive seemingly out of spite. That’s a bad geopolitical impulse every single time.
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Short, sweet and spot on. No other country has expanded in 20th century like Ukraine - from non-existence to 2nd largest in Europe, and most of that due to various Soviet leaders (a hard historic reality, but mentioning this is anathema to current Kiev regime). But just as 2014 was undoing Khrushchev's generosity of 1954, looks like 2022 will undo Lenin's from 1922. Remains to be seen if 2025 will see Stalin's generous land grant go back to its previous owners (in some way Poland already has their paws ready for it).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simplified_historical_map_of_Ukrainian_borders_1654-2014.jpg