You're reading: Snyder: Ukraine and Europe present dilemmas for each other

Editor's note: Professor of History at Yale University Timothy Snyder spoke about Ukraine as Europe's Dilemma at the Kyiv Biennial 2015, an arts, culture and education festival, on Sept. 12. Snyder has a PhD from the University of Oxford and specializes in history of Central and Eastern Europe, with a special focus on Ukraine.


“The covert war Russia has waged against Ukraine for the last 18 months in the eastern Donbas region,and the Kremlin’s invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea are existential threats to the whole of Europe.” This statement formed the core of a talk by Ukraine expert Professor TimothySnyder at the Kyiv Biennial 2015 on Sept. 12. Despite similar sentiments being repeatedly expressed by numerous experts and diplomats since the start of the crisis, Europe has yet to absorb it, and give the required support to Ukraine.

“I see the Ukrainian crisis as an
existential test for the European Union,” Snyder said. “This is the moment that
the European elites have to accept that they can’t exist if they keep on doing
nothing. They will only be able to exist if they take some hard, difficult
decisions.”

Snyder focused on six major themes in his
talk on why Ukraine and Europe present dilemmas for each other.

History

Ukrainian history makes no sense without seeing
it in the context of overall European history, while the latter makes no sense
without the inclusion of Ukraine’s “crucial central role,” Snyder said.

Ukrainian history includes all of the
important periods of European history writ large: The adoption of Christianity,
with influence from the Vikings, Jews and Khazars; church reformation,
including those of the Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic and Greek Catholic
churches; and the Renaissance (in fact without a “naissance,” as the Romans
never reached Ukraine.)

The period of colonization and
decolonization of the 19th and 20th centuries around the world was
not recognizedas happening inside Europe, where it instead took the form of
national revivals. Ukraine was in the centre of the process, with “internal
colonization,” as Stalin himself called it, first through the Soviet
collectivization of property and then via Hitler’s neo-colonial ideas,in which
Ukraine played a central role.

“Unless you have Ukraine on your mental
map, you can’t make sense of what the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were doing,
and if you can’t make sense of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, there’s no way
to understand European history,” Snyder said.

Nation

The idea of a nation state is not
particularly helpful in understanding contemporary Ukraine. Instead, the
country teaches us that nation building should be a political process, and one not
built solely on narrow ideas of language and ethnicity.

Kyiv is the only bilingual capital in
Europe – a fact few Europeans are aware of. For Ukrainians actual experience is
much more important than appeals to historical events.

“Ironically, Ukraine embodies politically
the European ideal –multilingualism – that doesn’t actually exist in the EU,”Snyder
said. Ukraine represents something Europeans think is good, but they fail to see
it.

Instead, when faced with the events in
Ukraine,Westerners tend to fall back to looking for answers in terms of
ethnicity, language and the nation state.

Civil society

Civil society takes up responsibility for
what the state fails to deliver, like equipment for the army and support for
refugees in Ukraine, and it often tries to reachout beyond the state. That is
the case for Ukraine – civil society is reaching out to the EU and trying to
improve the state by pulling in best practises from outside

“While the state is national by nature, civil
society is EU-minded in Ukraine,”Snyder said.

Truth

Truth is something civil society uses
against the government; truth is the weapon of the weak, like the law, or
principles. Those with power have no need of these.

For Ukraine truth is also crucial when appealing
to the wider world as a counter to Russia’s aggression.

The conflict has been very blurry for the
westerners from its very beginning, due to Russian propaganda designed to
create doubt and uncertainty. This has resulted in a reluctance by Europeans to
accept the obvious facts that Ukraine has suffered an old-style invasion.

So the only way Ukraine can reach out is by
making truth claims – factual and well-grounded statements, which force Europe
to react.

War

“Russia’s invasion is a geopolitical
catastrophe for everybody. The war in Ukraine is not about Ukraine, it is about
Europe, it’s part of much larger Russian policy to destabilize the EU,”Snyder
said.

It also includes support for radical and
anti-EU parties in major European countries. Russia is in favour of all forms of
separatism, and would welcome an alternative EU structure with weakened
integration. Making the union dysfunctional could work very well for the
Kremlin.

Snyder believes EU leaders understand that
now. “The question is: Do they care enough?” he said.

Attraction

The whole conflict began because the EU is
attractive to many Ukrainians, as it seems to present solutions to many of
Ukraine’s problems.

The EU didn’t set out to be attractive to
countries beyond its borders – it’s attractive just because of the way it works,
and the very fact that it works. It will only stop being attractive to
countries like Ukraine if it breaks down.

Europe and Ukraine are intertwined in numerous dimensions, and there seems to be no separate paths
for them out of the current Ukrainian crisis.

“For good or for ill, Europe and Ukraine
are in this together,” Snyder said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at
[email protected].