The tragedy of Ukraine stems from efforts to realize nationalist fantasies, says Professor Nicolai Petro

Born to a German mother and a Russian father, both of whom had emigrated to the US after the Second World War, Petro is fluent in Russian and found himself early on in his academic career in Washington DC, working in the State Department as Special Advisor for Policy in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs. It was from this vantage point in the early 1990s that he witnessed the fateful collapse of the Soviet Union, with his two immediate supervisors at the time both going on to become US Ambassadors to Russia. Since returning to academia in the mid-1990s he has written extensively on Russian foreign and domestic policy, and since 2008 – when he was invited by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to come and talk about ‚future visions‘ of Ukraine – he has taken a direct interest in Ukrainian politics, visiting the country nearly every year since for at least one month, and twice for an entire year as a visiting scholar. Most recently he has published a book with the curious title The Tragedy of Ukraine – What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us about Conflict Resolution, which takes a close look at the violent civil conflict in Ukraine since 2014 and its long historical roots.

Although Petro is quick to point out that he believes Russia’s 2022 invasion was in no way justified, he nonetheless believes that Ukraine’s internal political situation since the Maidan Revolution eight years earlier – in particular the rise of Ukrainian nationalism (the country’s ‚far right‘) with its strong anti-Russian sentiment – played a key role in creating the conditions that led to the current war.

I read Petro’s book after my interview in May of last year with exiled Ukrainian pacifist and dissident Ruslan Kotsaba (which you can read here). Among other things, I wanted to know if the book would confirm what Kotsaba had told me (as a Western Ukrainian) about the post-Maidan government’s hostile and humiliating treatment of its Eastern, Russian-speaking citizens. It did. I decided to get in touch with Nicolai Petro and ask him directly for his take on Kotsaba and what he had told me.

Have you heard of Ruslan Kotsaba?

Absolutely! He came to prominence when he decried the illegality of conscription for the ‚anti-terrorist operation‘ in the East [the official Ukrainian name for the war waged against Russian-speaking Separatists – ed.]. He said this was against the Constitution, and he was defended by a famous lawyer, Tatyana Montyan – and won, I think, his case, if I’m not mistaken.

I think after he spent a year and a half in custody.

Yes. Both of them are now in exile, and charged with treason.

So then, what is your opinion of Ruslan Kotsaba, and his peace activism?

In my opinion, Ruslan Kotsaba, as a Western Ukrainian, represents an alternative vision for Ukrainian identity. Specifically, it is one that was promoted and made popular 20 years ago by the famous leader of the political opposition in Western Ukraine, Viacheslav Chornovil. Viacheslav Chornovil was the leader of Rukh – ‘The Movement’, as it’s called in Ukrainian – which was the initial popular movement for Ukrainian independence. Their vision of a united Ukraine, in my view, does not mistake vengeance regarding the past for justice. The problem with vengeance – taking revenge on what was done to Ukrainians, in this case Western Ukrainians – is that it always renews the cycle of tragedy, since there will always be the next generation that seeks to re-establish its version of justice at the expense of the other. So the only way to break this cycle – and this is what I think Kotsaba and Chornovil both understood – is to strive for what the Greeks called ‘true justice’. And true justice is an outcome acceptable to all parties.

Let me ask you about something Kotsaba told me. He said that after the Maidan revolution, the new Western-supported government was ‚humiliating and dehumanising‘ its Russian-speaking citizens in the East, and that this was a big part of what led to, and perpetuated, the violent civil conflict that followed. And of course one of the chief complaints of those Russian-speakers was that the new language laws adopted back then were designed to suppress the use of the Russian language. But when I asked a well-known Ukraine/Russia expert here in Slovakia about this, he told me the opposite: that the Ukrainian government doesn’t discriminate against its Russian-speaking citizens at all, and that the only attempt made to suppress the Russian language was stopped long ago.

But this is incorrect.

Okay, so explain, please.

History didn’t stop in May of 2014. We have had numerous additional language laws, including the imposition since 2019 of a government language Ombudsman. Let me just give you a quote from that first Ombudsman – there have since been two others, but the first one, Tatiana Monakhova, explained the purpose of her office in 2019 in these words, quote: ‘The dream was always to cultivate, build or construct a powerful homogeneous Ukrainian monolith, a society of the like-minded, who speak the State language, having no disagreements on major issues of State. Monoliths are created by using both whips and pastries.’ End quote. By the way, why did she resign? She resigned because she felt she was not given the tools needed to impose the whips and to offer the pastries. This issue has since been rectified, in early 2021, with the ability given to the language Ombudsman to impose fines for the public use of Russian, meaning in the public sphere. Because right now, if you use Russian in a public service capacity, that can be fined. Even in a private service capacity: for example, if I go to a restaurant – a private restaurant, a private institution – and I order in Russian, the waiter has the right to refuse to serve me unless we come to an agreement on the language to be spoken. But the presumptive language that must be spoken by law is now Ukrainian.

Even in a restaurant?

Even in a restaurant.

In your book you cite official Ukrainian documents laying out government plans to forcibly ‚re-educate‘ the country’s Eastern citizens in order to completely eradicate all Russian influence, once they’ve finally been subdued and are under full Ukrainian control – assuming this ever happens. The plans involve severely restricting the rights of these citizens until the process is completed. When I asked the expert I mentioned earlier about this, he said that the real problem was not the government or its plans, but those Eastern citizens themselves who like Russian culture and prefer not to speak Ukrainian – that they have an imperialistic mindset left over from the days of the Soviet Union, and simply cannot adapt to the new reality that they are now citizens of the Ukrainian State. He even asked, rhetorically: ‚What – do you want the State to be subordinate to you?‘

Well, the answer to that, of course, is yes. We call that liberal democracy. That is the essence of modern liberal democracy.

He also said that any political nation would do the same as Ukraine has done, that every modern State has its one national language and rules enforcing it. He mentioned France and Spain as examples.

That is clearly not the case. It is virtually never the case in the EU, because it is precisely the hallmark of the EU to be pluricultural and liberal, and to encourage minority languages and their usage. Many countries in the EU are bilingual, and even trilingual, and even in countries that aspire to a single cultural standard – Spain, Italy, Germany, France – regional differences are respected and protected by the law. That is not the case in Ukraine today. This argument – the argument that the political nation has one language that everyone must speak – is based on an ideological principle of nationalism, and specifically that this will guarantee national unity by marginalizing and eradicating – pulling up from the roots – minorities that are not tolerated in a monist political nation. But in reality, it doesn’t work that way. You mentioned his claim that those who choose to speak Russian in a Ukrainian-speaking political nation are held back by their own imperialism. But I’m afraid you could view the shoe as being on the other foot, entirely. It is imperialism to insist on the speaking of Ukrainian, on linguistic monism, especially when one considers the fact that in most major cities of the Ukraine 80 % of the population is more comfortable speaking Russian.

Western commentators often argue that it’s ridiculous to claim Ukraine’s current government is ultra-nationalist or fascist, or that it discriminates against its Russian speakers, since President Zelensky himself is not only Jewish, but he’s from Eastern Ukraine and speaks Russian. How do you answer that argument?

I think Zelensky today, is not the Zelensky that was elected. He was elected to accomplish peace, as was every politician elected, and that was his agenda. However, once in office, he found it impossible to pursue this agenda.

Why?

I would have to engage in speculation as to ‚why‘. I am basing my answer on the policies that I see. The ‚why‘ requires me to speculate about his state of mind, his character, what influences there might be behind the scenes; and a lot of people have done that. I have no way to give preference to one explanation of ‚why‘ over another. But I think it is demonstrable that the agenda that he ran under in 2019, famously of being willing to go to Moscow on his knees in order to achieve peace – he often mocked and poked fun of extreme nationalist rhetoric on his show; in fact, he even said ‚I don’t understand why we shouldn’t allow people these regions to speak Russian;‘ it was all very homey, you know, and folksy, and sort of like ‚I get where people are coming from on this‘ – but as a political figure he has switched gears. I would go so far as to say that every president, no matter what they ran as – and they typically run as a candidate who wants to improve relations with Russia and to welcome Russian investments – however, once they are in office, they begin to sing a different tune and pursue policies that are virtually the exact opposite.

Ruslan Kotsaba complains about the same thing.

Well, it’s so obvious that it cannot be missed. But then the question becomes: well, what is the source of this influence, of this deleterious influence? Some people say, it’s the oligarchs. They say: well, you have to understand that after independence, Ukrainian oligarchs were – relative to Russian oligarchs – smaller, less connected, and less wealthy. So they relied on the protection of the state to create a barrier for them that would protect them from Russian takeovers. And one way to support this resistance to Russian investment and influence is to support the idea of Ukraine as the antithesis of Russia. That’s one theory. The other theory that has gained traction, especially since 2014, is the theory of rising nationalism. I’m far from the only one to point this out, and in fact there have been at least 65 articles in major Western outlets since 2014 that highlight the rise of the far right as a political instrument – in other words, as an institutional aspect of the regime after 2014. One of the most well-regarded and widely cited [Ukrainian] analysts who speaks of this is Volodymyr Ishchenko, and his specialty is on the social component and political rise of the far right in Ukrainian society as a political instrument. I’d go further than that, as a political institution. So he talks about that, and I pick up on it by citing the prominent positions in government that were given to the representatives of the far right after 2014, which allowed them to create fiefdoms that they controlled in the areas that were of prime concern to them: not foreign policy, but education policy, language policy – which has since become its own branch off of education and culture – and internal security forces.

This is very interesting, because before the invasion many people recognised that Ukraine has a ‚far right‘ problem. But since then, if it’s ever mentioned, the standard response is to deny it by pointing out that there are very few far-right people in the Parliament, and of course Zelensky is Jewish, etc.

That masks the process that has been underway since 2014, and that has made great strides between 2014 and 2022, which is the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and perspectives. They used to be considered fringe. Today, the same ideas that were once exclusively voiced by Svoboda, the Far Right Sector and Azov Battalion, are now commonplace political statements. And that mainstreaming, which you could turn a blind eye to in the past, now has a very obvious marker: Azov is no longer seen as an extremist organization, but rather – certainly in Ukrainian mythology, in the mythology about the war – these are heroes and exemplars for the nation. And this has been widely accepted as valid by a host of Western media outlets and spokesmen. Another interesting example: every historian knows that the greeting Slava Ukraini, Glory to Ukraine, was a kind of password for the [Nazi-collaborating] Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, by which one recognized one’s own in the underground, under German occupation in Western Ukraine and after World War II. It is their symbol, it is their slogan. Making this the mainstream slogan today – and having Western presidents and prime ministers repeat it with aplomb, cutting off the historical context – is as shocking, I think, as implementing some aspect of Jim Crow today and then saying, ‚Well, that was a long time ago. We’re modernizing it for the present.‘ That would be well understood in the United States and Europe.

I’d like to ask you about Ukraine’s current education law, which I’ve heard is also controversial. It’s been explained to me, however, that it’s more or less identical to the education law we have here in Slovakia – that it basically just introduces the Ukrainian language as a compulsory subject in schools. Meaning that students can have other subjects in their native language, but they also have to learn Ukrainian. That doesn’t sound controversial to me.

That is an oversimplification. Because accompanying this, is what we have seen in fact: the shutting down of any alternative schools. And the systematic elimination throughout Eastern and Southern Ukraine of schools offering Russian language classes if students, and the parents of students, wish to organize such classes. The motivation for not allowing Russian language courses to be organised even on a voluntary basis in schools, is obviously politically motivated.

So what you’re saying is that it’s not just a case of them having to take Ukrainian as a compulsory subject, but – what exactly are they doing? Are they trying to completely shut down these alternative schools?

Yes, yes. The law anticipates, eventually, the elimination of alternative education at all levels.

What happens if somebody wants to continue with an existing school that has already been teaching Russian?

There are no schools that teach Russian in Ukraine.

No? They’re gone?

I mean, I hesitate to say ‘no schools’, because the figures that I’ve seen speak of 95 to 99% of Russian language schools shut down in Ukraine over the last 30 years. But I can tell you, the net effect of that has not been to reduce the popularity of Russian among youth.

Okay, so all these laws are not really having an effect on what language people prefer to use on a regular basis, with their friends, at the bar or whatever. And is it a goal of the government even to eliminate Russian in this kind of casual, social, ‘out with friends’ type of environment?

The goal – according to the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Committee, Oleksiy Danilov – the goal is, quote: ‘The Russian language must completely disappear from our territory, it being an aspect of hostile propaganda and the brainwashing of our population.’ End quote. That’s the goal.

But I can’t imagine it’s a realistic goal. I mean, how would they even – Does anybody really think they’d be able to accomplish that?

In an ideological world, you follow your fantasies. That is the danger of nationalism – that it is a fantasy, not a reality. And implementing that fantasy has devastating consequences, not just on the individual but on the body politic as a whole. That’s what I see the tragedy of Ukraine being.