Russia reaches back to Denikin, Mazepa in fight
Ukraine and Russia can’t seem to agree on anything of late. Natural gas payments, the Ukrainian language, Ukraine’s participation in European Union projects – everything seems to be annoying Moscow.
Debates over the complicated history between both nations are no exception. The newest standoff has been triggered by Kyiv’s decision to have a statue erected to Hetman Ivan Mazepa, a Kozak leader in 17th-century Ukraine. Political analysts say that Moscow’s protests over Mazepa’s rehabilitation reflect a deep desire to keep Ukraine within Russia’s cultural and historical orbit.
Mazepa was the hetman, or leader, of the Kozaks who inhabited the central and northeastern regions of modern-day Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is credited with uniting the warriors from the left and right banks of the Dnipro River. When the Kozak Hetmanate came under threat from the Poles in 1708, Mazepa broke from previous ally Peter The Great, the Russian czar, who refused to supply a significant force to help with defense. Allied with the Swedes and the Poles, Mazepa lost a decisive battle against Russian forces at Poltava in 1709.
A statue in his honor will be unveiled on Independence Day on Aug. 24 in Poltava, two months after the 300th anniversary of the battle. “It’s not by chance,” said Valeriy Asadchev, chairman of the regional state administration in Poltava. “Mazepa played an extraordinarily important role in the formation of our nation.”
During the Soviet period, Mazepa was denounced as a traitor and a Ukrainian nationalist. But since the country declared independence in 1991, he has been portrayed in a more favorable light. On March 20, Mazepa’s 370th birthday, President Victor Yushchenko said that it was time to dispel the myth of his treason. He emphasized Mazepa’s wish for an independent Ukraine and his cultural achievements. “Ukraine was coming to life as a country of European cultural traditions,” he said.
Moscow is unimpressed. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week issued a statement condemning the rehabilitation of Mazepa, calling on Ukrainians not to be drawn into “an artificial and contrived confrontation with Russia.”
“We would like to remind the Ukrainian leadership that games with history, particularly with a nationalistic background, have never led to anything good. Trying to re-write the common Russian-Ukrainian history, Ukrainian authorities split society rather than uniting it,” the ministry said in a statement.
In recent weeks, Russia has made a number of moves to shore up the dominance of its views of history. On May 20, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the creation of a presidential commission “to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in with his take on the two counties’ shared history on May 24. In an unusual exchange with reporters in Moscow, he recommended that they read the diaries of Anton Denikin, a commander in the White Army that fought the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution in 1917.
“He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia – Ukraine,” Putin said, according to Russian newswires, after laying a wreath at Denikin’s grave. “He says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.”
Putin’s words were seen as an attempt to warn the West not to interfere in Ukraine. Experts say that Russia consistently uses its strong historical and cultural links with Ukraine as a justification for what Medvedev has called his country’s “privileged interests” in the region.
“Russia sees Ukraine as a large threat,” said Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Diplomatic Academy. “For 300 years they have tried to take Ukraine’s history as their own. Ukraine’s independence destroys the imperial myth of Russia. They need to keep the myth going.”
The Kremlin accuses Kyiv of tearing the two countries apart with its promotion of a different approach to history. But Moscow’s bad mouthing of this approach and any steps made towards the West, primarily through state-controlled TV, is seen as itself having led to a dramatic worsening in relations between Russians and Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s ambassador in Moscow, Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, noted with concern on May 17 the recent rise in anti-Ukrainian feeling in Russia. A poll by Russia’s Levada Center in January and February showed that 62 percent of Russians have a negative attitude towards Ukraine, whereas 91 percent of Ukrainians expressed positive feelings towards Russia.
“An information campaign is being carried out against our state by the Russian media,” the ambassador said.
Russian media also give Moscow’s views a wide airing in Ukraine, as Russian TV is particularly popular in the south and east of the country, where pro-Russian sentiment is strongest.
“Propaganda on the [Russian] state-controlled TV channels is a tool for influencing people within Ukraine,” said Valeriy Chaly, head of international programs at the Razumkov Center think tank. He added that Moscow’s aim is to prevent the consolidation of a political nation in Ukraine.
But while such propaganda may be disruptive, analysts said that attempting to mobilize Ukrainians along ethnic lines is not a political trump card. “People don’t have a clear understanding of their own political identity,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the International Institute for Democracy. “If you ask people on the street about their identity they will say they are Ukrainian, but they will speak Russian. People cross barriers.”
But although arguments over history may not, as Moscow claims, be tearing Ukrainian society apart, the Russian response to the rehabilitation of Mazepa reflects a more worrying trend: increasingly aggressive Russian rhetoric. While many analysts see this as threats to try to keep Ukraine in line, Paliy said that – in the wake of Russia’s war in South Ossetia last August – a modern-day Battle of Poltava shouldn’t be ruled out. Paliy said: “The Russian leadership’s words show very serious intentions. Russia can change its position in a second, and it could lead to war if they can find a pretext.”
