By Ronald Suny
The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, “it is what is left out.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and intertwined history of those two nations and their peoples. Much of what the public is hearing, though, is jarring to historian Suny’s ears. That’s because some of it is incomplete, some of it is wrong, and some of it is obscured or refracted by the self-interest or the limited perspective of who is telling it. We asked Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, to respond to a number of popular historical assertions he’s heard recently.
Putin’s view of Russo-Ukrainian history has been widely criticized in the West. What do you think motivates his version of the history?
Putin believes that Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are one people, bound by shared history and culture. But he also is aware that they have become separate states recognized in international law and by Russian governments as well. At the same time, he questions the historical formation of the modern Ukrainian state, which he says was the tragic product of decisions by former Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. He also questions the sovereignty and distinctive nation-ness of Ukraine. While he promotes national identity in Russia, he denigrates the growing sense of nation-ness in Ukraine.
Photo by Russian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Putin indicates that Ukraine by its very nature ought to be friendly, not hostile, to Russia. But he sees its current government as illegitimate, aggressively nationalist and even fascist. The condition for peaceful relations between states, he repeatedly says, is that they do not threaten the security of other states. Yet, as is clear from the invasion, he presents the greatest threat to Ukraine.
Putin sees Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, believing that if it enters NATO, offensive weaponry will be placed closer to the Russian border, as already is being done in Romania and Poland.
It’s possible to interpret Putin’s statements about the historical genesis of the Ukrainian state as self-serving history and a way of saying, “We created them, we can take them back.” But I believe he may instead have been making a forceful appeal to Ukraine and the West to recognize the security interests of Russia and provide guarantees that there will be no further moves by NATO toward Russia and into Ukraine. Ironically, his recent actions have driven Ukrainians more tightly into the arms of the West.
The Western position is that the breakaway regions Putin recognized, Donetsk and Luhansk, are integral parts of Ukraine. Russia claims that the Donbass region, which includes these two provinces, is historically and rightfully part of Russia. What does history tell us?
During the Soviet period, these two provinces were officially part of Ukraine. When the USSR disintegrated, the former Soviet republic boundaries became, under international law, the legal boundaries of the post-Soviet states. Russia repeatedly recognized those borders, though reluctantly in the case of Crimea.
But when one raises the fraught question of what lands belong to what people, a whole can of worms is opened. The Donbass has historically been inhabited by Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and others. It was in Soviet and post-Soviet times largely Russian ethnically and linguistically. When in 2014 the Maidan revolution in Kyiv moved the country toward the West and Ukrainian nationalists threatened to limit the use of the Russian language in parts of Ukraine, rebels in the Donbas violently resisted the central government of Ukraine.
Photo by Martin Trabalik/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
After months of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebel forces in the Donbas in 2014, regular Russian forces moved in from Russia, and a war began that has lasted for the last eight years, with thousands killed and wounded.
Historical claims to land are always contested – think of Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis – and they are countered by claims that the majority living on the land in the present takes precedence over historical claims from the past. Russia can claim Donbass with its own arguments based on ethnicity, but so can Ukrainians with arguments based on historical possession. Such arguments go nowhere and often lead, as can be seen today, to bloody conflict.
Why was Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent such a pivotal event in the conflict?
When Putin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, he seriously escalated the conflict, which turned out to be the prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That invasion is a hard, harsh signal to the West that Russia will not back down and accept the further arming of and placing of weaponry in Ukraine, Poland and Romania. The Russian president has now led his country into a dangerous preventive war – a war based on the anxiety that sometime in the future his country will be attacked – the outcome of which is unpredictable.
A New York Times story on Putin’s histories of Ukraine says “The newly created Soviet government under Lenin that drew so much of Mr. Putin’s scorn on Monday would eventually crush the nascent independent Ukrainian state. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was banished from schools and its culture was permitted to exist only as a cartoonish caricature of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants.” Is this history of Soviet repression accurate?
Lenin’s government won the 1918-1921 civil war in Ukraine and drove out foreign interventionists, thus consolidating and recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. But Putin is essentially correct that it was Lenin’s policies that promoted Ukrainian statehood within the USSR, within a Soviet empire, officially granting it and other Soviet republics the constitutional right to secede from the Union without conditions. This right, Putin angrily asserts, was a landmine that eventually blew up the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainian language was never banned in the USSR and was taught in schools. In the 1920s, Ukrainian culture was actively promoted by the Leninist nationality policy.
But under Stalin, Ukrainian language and culture began to be powerfully undermined. This started in the early 1930s, when Ukrainian nationalists were repressed, the horrific “Death Famine” killed millions of Ukrainian peasants, and Russification, which is the process of promoting Russian language and culture, accelerated in the republic.
Within the strict bounds of the Soviet system, Ukraine, like many other nationalities in the USSR, became a modern nation, conscious of its history, literate in its language, and even in puffy pants permitted to celebrate its ethnic culture. But the contradictory policies of the Soviets in Ukraine both promoted a Ukrainian cultural nation while restricting its freedoms, sovereignty and expressions of nationalism.
History is both a contested and a subversive social science. It is used and misused by governments and pundits and propagandists. But for historians it is also a way to find out what happened in the past and why. As a search for truth, it becomes subversive of convenient and comfortable but inaccurate views of where we came from and where we might be going.
Ronald Suny is Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Michigan.
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Jimbo99 says
Obama & Biden will be forever linked to what happened from 2014-Present. Trump somehow made it thru without Russia start a war. Let’s not be soft on Biden. Since Biden has been POTUS, the only thing Biden gets credit for is taking out the Terrorist leader with a drone strike. In 13 months, Israel has had issues, Afghanistan pullout involved deaths. North Korea is firing off missiles again. This didn’t happen under Trump, why is that ? Tell me again, what has Biden done better than Trump, on anything domestic & international beyond rejoining organizations that really haven’t done better collectively for Covid or Global Warming. If anyone thinks Biden’s efforts has reduced pollution, it hasn’t & all it’s accomplished is doubling of gasoline prices at the pump that are about to go up because of the Russian War. Biden ran on a platform that he gets things done. How did his diplomacy go with Russia & Putin ? Putin isn’t sitting down at a table with Biden to watch him stammer & stutter thru negotiations. American voters can’t even watch him give a presser on the status of the Russian War.
Alonzo says
Fjb, Tr. was an embarrsment to the country, and he is still an awful embarrsment.
C says
Trump didn’t start a war with Russia because he was allegedly was working with them. Remember the “backchannels” that were being set up by Kushner and Trump with the Russian government so they didn’t have to deal with the pesky CIA or FBI? It certainly looks that way trying to circumvent the United States Government.
Lets not forget in 2019, when Mr. Trump withheld $400 million in military aid unless Ukrainian President Zelensky announced an investigation into the Biden’s. This is discussed in the video below.
If anybody really wants to know the truth about what happened from 2013 to today, here is a program produced by German broadcaster DW (Deutsche Welle).
https://youtu.be/qD6jX1QlB_E
Steve says
TFG is an orange deranged clown that can’t pass a mirror. A disgrace to the Office in every sense of the word. A true Narcissist. Hes gone get over it. I will give him credit for speeding up the development of C19 vaccine. The twice Impeached, loser is what he is. Continuing to spread the Big Lie errr Steal tells a 5th Grader all you need to know. Speak for yourself see you at the Polls. PS You mustn’t have read the Article or Post so dubiously presented on Why gas prices went up initially. Being drunk on orange Kool Aid disables your brain’s ability to comprehend. Go cry a river
Tom Mutschler says
Read Tarus Bulba and you will understand the true history of the region !
DaleL says
This story omits some facts concerning Ukraine. First, during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukrainians voted by a 92.3% to 7.7% to be independent of the Soviet Union. In 1994, Ukraine gave up its Soviet era nuclear weapons. In return, the territorial integrity and security of Ukraine was promised by the USA, Britain, and RUSSIA in the Budapest Memorandum.
FJB says
Yet Another global crisis where Biden Shows his feeble minded weakness, and utter lack of the statesmanship he professed to have and ran for office on. Plummeting poll numbers show the lack of confidence Republicans, independents and behold! even democrats have in this supposedly polished Savy politician, He can barely order the green jello at a nursing home, what a total embarrassment for the USA.
Alonzo says
Jimbo99, you can say all you want to about Biden. Whst did Tr. do in 4 years? Please tell me because I don’t remember anything good Tr. did. Biden does have more tha 2 yes. left in office.He will get something done. Tr. did nothing but cause division. Biden is far from being perfect but he is much better than Tr. Many white republican males said Biden would not last 6 months, he has passed his first year. I live when white people are caught in a lie. Makes my day. I will vote for a rattle snake before I vote for Tr. if he run again. I would not be surprised if Tr. is not a part of the invasion. What about the insurrection, he was a part of that. What about the fraud during the election, he said the states he lost there was unfounded fraud. If Buden loose in 2024 I believe he will leave office like a mature well mannered human being. Not Tr. he is sill lying about the election.
Sherry says
Jimbo99. . . you don’t know what you are talking about and have been “fact checked”. . . North Korea tested a multitude of missiles during the trump administration!
This long list is only for the first 9 months of 2017:
2017
February 12, 2017: North Korea tests a new ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-2. North Korean media calls the test a success. The missile flew about 500 kilometers at a lofted trajectory.
March 6, 2017: North Korea launches four ballistic missiles from a region near North Korea’s border with China. The missiles fly about 1,000 kilometers and land in Japanese economic exclusion zone, about 300 kilometers off the coast Japan.
April 5, 2017: North Korea tests a ballistic missile. The missile explodes shortly after the launch.
April 16, 2017: North Korea tests a ballistic missile. The missile explodes shortly after the launch.
May 2, 2017: The THAAD missile defense system becomes operational in South Korea.
May 14, 2017: North Korea tests the Hwasong-12 missile. The missile test is successful with a range of 4,800 kilometers on a standard trajectory, making it an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
July 3, 3017: North Korea tests its Hwasong-14 ballistic missile. Initial analysis of the test indicates that the range would have been about 6,700 kilometers at a standard trajectory, making it an ICBM.
July 28, 2017: Japan, South Korea, and the United States report that North Korea tested an ICBM. Initial analysis of the test indicates a range of about 10,400km, not taking into account the rotation of the Earth, putting Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago within range. Russia claimed the missile was a medium-range ballistic missile.
August 8, 2017: A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report found that North Korea has produced miniaturized nuclear warheads for ballistic missile delivery, including for ICBMs.
On the same day, in response to North Korean criticism of the United States, President Trump told reporters that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States…. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
August 9, 2017: In response to Trump’s remarks, North Korean made a statement detailing a plan to test four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, which would fly over Japan and land in the waters 30-40km from the coast of Guam.
August 10, 2017: Trump told reporters that his previous threat of “fire and fury” should North Korea continue to threaten the United States may not have been “tough enough”.
August 11, 2017: Trump tweeted: “military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”
August 14, 2017: Kim Jong Un declares that after receiving Guam strike plans, he will wait to see what Washington’s next move is before making a decision.
August 25, 2017: North Korea tests three short-range ballistic missiles to the northeast, two of which flew about 155 miles, and one of which blew up immediately.
August 28, 2017: North Korea tests its Hwasong-12 missile, which flew over 2,700km and overflew Japan. In a statement the next day, President Trump claims “all options are on the table.”
September 2, 2017: North Korea official state media releases photos of Kim Jong Un with what it claims is a thermonuclear weapon small enough to fit on an ICBM that could reach the continental United States.
September 3, 2017: North Korea conducts its sixth nuclear test, claiming the device tested was a hydrogen bomb and the test was a “perfect success.” Seismic activity indicates that North Korea did conduct its largest nuclear test to date at 3:30 UTC. The initial estimate from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) is that the seismic event’s magnitude was around 5.8, occurred at a very shallow depth, and took place in the immediate vicinity of North Korea’s Pyunggye-ri test site.
AJ says
I find it interesting no one was able to get the full scoop on why Putin decided to literally call Biden out of the thin air about a month before this all jumped off. All the news networks were chalking it up as Putin wanting attention etc.
Has anybody considered that US leaders hands may be tied due to the fact NSA leaker Snowden has set up a channel to deliver Putin intelligence info as needed so he can continue to stay in Russia? More than once Putin has exposed the US to its own allies for questionable tactics.
Guarantee Putin played his hand this time as far as releasing damming information knowing both republicans and democrats would be in trouble with the world if they stepped in his way.
JimBob says
As we debate who is the bigger buffoon, greater thief or more incompetent asshole between Biden and Trump, Ukrainians are dying by the hundreds if not thousands at the hands of a ruthless butcher. That is the America our country has become and it is clear, we ain’t going to change.
oldtimer says
Our present leader said “Putins days of bullying are over, if I’m elected I’ll go toe to toe with him” Well how did that work out for Ukraine?
Sherry says
Not to confuse Jimbo99 and other cult members with credible information. . . Here are just a few of President Biden’s accomplishments after only 13 months in office . . . even with congressional Republicans dedicated to blocking his every move:
1) $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package
2) The $1.9 trillion COVID relief deal. . . now, Jimbo99 surely you are not a hypocrite . . . you didn’t cash that check, did you?
3.) Commitment to Combating Climate Change.
Shortly after coming to power, Biden re-joined the international Paris Climate Accord, which Trump had parted ways with, allowing the U.S. to continue to work with global players in the worldwide drive to deter the climate’s deterioration.
Last November, the President joined an additional agreement aimed at reversing deforestation as well as presenting a 100-country strong pledge to reduce greenhouse emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030.
4.) Reduced unemployment
The Biden administration has also been faced with the challenge of restoring a semblance of normalcy to an economy burdened by the pandemic. In his freshman year, Biden has managed to reduce the rate of national unemployment.
In December, the national unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent while jobless claims sunk to their lowest levels since 1969. When Biden took office, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent.
Despite the growing inflation, wages paid by private businesses also saw an increase of 2.4 percent from January through October last year, while disposable income rose by 3 percent.
5.) The U.S. economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest full-year clip since 1984, roaring back in the pandemic’s second year despite two new virus variants that rocked the country.
6.) Rebuilt alliances with NATO democracies who are currently exhibiting a united front against horrific Russian aggression in Ukraine (the same aggression that trump called “Genius”)
Alonzo says
Sherry thank you for the info. Thank you very much.
Sherry says
Of course Alonzo. . . always happy to post the actual factual truth in order to counter the BS “propaganda” mindlessly copied and pasted from the cancerous FOX cult.
Alonzo, I like you thinking. . . keeping on telling it like it is!