Borderland (33 page)

With the Tripartite Agreement, Ukraine’s diplomatic standing improved dramatically. Seeing Moscow’s White House wrecked by shell-fire, Zhirinovsky triumphant in Russia’s parliamentary elections, and civil war raging in Yugoslavia, America belatedly realised that Ukraine was too important to be left out in the cold. Keeping Russia democratic meant keeping Ukraine independent, and keeping Ukraine independent meant doing something about its economy. In 1994 Ukraine became the fourth-biggest recipient of American aid after Israel, Egypt and Russia itself. The following spring the IMF backed Kuchma’s reform programme, and twisted Russia’s arm into rescheduling Ukraine’s fuel debts, by making a deal an unspoken condition of Russia receiving its own IMF loan. In October 1994 Kuchma was given the full-scale red-carpet treatment on a trip to Washington, and returned the compliment five months later when Clinton made a flattering three-day state visit to Kiev.

Despite campaign promises of closer relations with Russia, Kuchma met the West’s overtures with enthusiasm. During his first term as president, Ukraine became a member of the Council of Europe (a 41-country-strong organisation that theoretically guarantees members respect for democracy, human rights and rule of law) and acquired observer status in the Western European Union, the EU’s embryonic defence arm. Though a tentative request to be considered for associate EU membership got nowhere, a ‘Partnership and Co-operation Agreement’ with the EU, forged in 1998, gave Ukraine limited trading privileges and regular high-level diplomatic contact. During NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in the spring of 1999, Kiev grumbled but refrained from outright condemnation, and Ukrainian troops served with the NATO-led force in Kosovo and as UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. Ukraine is still capable of dreadful diplomatic gaucheries: EU relations have been soured by its perverse refusal to close down Chernobyl, and the government once chose the day before a meeting on a new multimillion‘dollar aid package to send police to occupy the Kiev offices of the World Bank. But for the time being, Ukraine’s age-old tightrope-walk has acquired a definite westward tilt.

Much as Kuchma cosies up to Washington and Berlin, however, Ukraine’s future chiefly hangs, as always, on what happens in Moscow. If the West has had a hard time coming to terms with Ukrainian independence, Russia has hardly begun. ‘Russians have still not accepted, deep in their hearts, that Ukraine is a legitimate phenomenon,’ says Szporluk. ‘Whether your name is Zhirinovsky, Yavlinsky or Gaidar, somewhere in your mind you think that Ukraine is a fake, a phony.’ So far, Russian grouchiness at Ukrainian independence has not translated into action. The Yeltsin government agreed to respect Ukraine’s borders, rescheduled — albeit under pressure from America — Ukraine’s fuel debts, and refrained from stirring up trouble in Crimea. Ordinary Russians put all foreign-policy issues at the bottom of their list of concerns in polls, well after crime and jobs.

Poor and demoralised, Russia currently lacks the will and resources for adventures abroad. Even re-integration of Belarus (which would be popular with most Belarussians, but involve giving their politicians a say in Russian affairs and an expensive bail-out of the Belarussian currency) has made little headway. The big, unanswerable question is whether, if Russia regains wealth and self-confidence, it will try to rebuild its old empire, or come to terms with its loss as Britain and France did fifty years ago. Most doyens of Western opinion are optimistic. Richard Pipes, the hawkish Harvard history professor who served on Reagan’s National Security Council and spent a career denouncing Russian polity through the ages, thinks the national psyche profoundly changed by the loss of the Cold War. ‘There’s a Turgenev story,’ he says. ‘A man is lying on the grass in the sun. A milkmaid comes along and gives him bread, milk. He thinks to himself — “Why do we need Constantinople?” Russia is the same about places like Crimea now.’
³
Tim Colton, another Harvard academic and an expert on the Russian army, thinks progress will be bumpy, but broadly in the right direction: ‘Ukraine is a pretty secondary issue in Russia now. Governments will alternate between the common-sense approach and taking swipes just for the fun of it.’
⁴

If the optimists are wrong, there are plenty of ways Russia could try to force Ukraine back into the fold. Nobody expects tanks to roll into Kiev as they have into Grozny, but Russia could stir up secessionism amongst ethnic Russians in Crimea and the Donbass, as it did in Moldova, Georgia and Tadzhikistan. Once an alternative westward pipeline through Belarus is completed, it could also cut off Ukraine’s oil and gas supplies — both moves to which Ukraine remains vulnerable until it has sorted out its economy. Russia is already pressuring Ukraine to join more closely in CIS institutions, and squabbles over Sevastopol meant repeated postponement of a Friendship Treaty reconfirming mutual borders, finally signed in May 1997.

Ukrainians feared that the catalyst for renewed Russian aggression might be the eastward expansion of NATO. In Simon Hemans’ words, ‘They see themselves as non-aligned, but worry that it’ll be hard to stay that way if the West is playing the expand-the-alignment game. They’re scared that when the Central Europeans are taken into NATO Russia will – not lash out, but loom all over them. And the West will allow it, because it doesn’t really care if Ukraine stays in the Russian half of Europe.’ So far, that has not happened, but though Ukraine participates in joint exercises with NATO troops under America’s Partnership for Peace programme, and won consultation rights, similar to Russia’s, at the Madrid summit of 1997, there is no serious talk as yet of Ukraine applying to join NATO itself. Any such move would be guaranteed to lash Russia into a bearish fury, and American public opinion is quite unprepared to extend security guarantees to the Ukrainian-Russian border. Even if Kuchma were to ask for inclusion, it is far from certain that he could take his country with him. Poised precariously between Russian-ness and European-ness, Ukrainians simply do not see themselves as part of the West in the same way that Poles, Czechs, Baits and Hungarians do. Senior politicians talk in private about applying for NATO membership one day, but not until Russia’s own relations with the West are far friendlier.

What kind of place will Ukraine be in ten years’ time? At worst, it will be a fragile, poverty-stricken buffer-state in a new divide between an introverted West and an aggressive, unstable Russia. At best, it will be a rich, heavyweight democracy in a continent-wide partnership of friendly like-minded states. Given the two countries’ halting progress so far, the latter looks — cross fingers — rather likelier than the former. The West’s role should be to slap down any renewed Russian pretensions to empire, and to keep on prodding Ukraine, with a mixture of sticks and carrots, towards economic reform.

Forecasting is a mug’s game. But without a doubt, Ukrainians now have their best chance ever of building a free and prosperous state of their own. If they succeed
Ukraina
will become a misnomer, for they will cease to inhabit a country ‘on the edge,’ a borderland to other nations.

In his novella
Taras Bulba,
Gogol has his Cossack hero ride off into the steppe with his two sons to fight the Poles:

The steppe has long been put to the plough, and Bulba never existed. But Bulba’s dream of an independent Ukraine was real, and has come true. Gogol’s story ends in tragedy. One son is captured and broken on the wheel in Warsaw; the other turns traitor, and is killed by his own father. Bulba himself is burned at the stake. This time, the Ukrainians’ journey looks like it will have a happier ending. After a thousand years of one of the bloodiest histories in the world, they surely deserve it.

NOTES

1
The Russian Primary Chronicle Laurentian Text,
trans, and ed. Samuel Cross and Olgerd Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 59.

2
Robert Byron,
First Russia, then Tibet,
London, 1985, p. 121.

3
Michael Hamm,
Kiev: a Portrait 1800–1917,
Princeton, 1993, p. 15.

4
Primary Chronicle,
p. 93.

5
Ibid., p. 94.

6
Ibid., p. 97.

7
Ibid., p. 111.

8
Ibid., p. 111.

9
Ibid., p. 116.

10
Volodymyr Sichynskyi,
Ukraine in Foreign Comments and Descriptions from the VIth to the XXth Century,
New York, 1953, p. 37.

11
George Vernadsky and Michael Karpovich,
A History of Russia: Vol. 2 Kiev an Russia,
Newhaven, 1948, p. 83.

12
The Song of Igor’s Campaign: an epic of the twelfth century,
trans. Vladimir Nabokov, London, 1961, p. 45.

13
Hamm,
Kiev,
p. 5.

14
Ibid., p. 18.

15
Michael Hrushevsky, The Traditional Scheme of "Russian" History and the Problem of the Rational Organization of the History of the East Slavs’, pub. 1903 and reprinted in English in
Slavistica: Proceedings of the Institute of Slavistics of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences
No. 55, Winnipeg, 1966, pp. 8–9.

16
Vernadsky,
History of Russia,
p. 309.

17
Richard Pipes,
Russia Under the Old Regime,
London, 1974, p. 75.

18
The Travels of Macarius: Extracts from the Diary of the Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, written in Arabic by his son Paul Archdeacon of Aleppo; in the years of their journeying 1652–1660,
London, 1936, p. 20.

19
Ibid., pp. 20–21.

20
Ibid., p. 91.

21
Ibid., p. 94.

22
Byron,
Russia, then Tibet,
p. 40.

23
Ibid., p. 123.

24
John Steinbeck,
A Russian Journal,
London, 1994, pp. 53–4.

25
Mikhail Bulgakov,
The White Guard,
trans. Michael Glenny, London, 1971, p. 55.

26
Ibid., p. 62.

27
Ibid., p. 302.

1
Adam Czartoryski,
Memoirs of Prince Adam Cartoryski,
London, 1888, vol. I, p. 38.

2
Sophia Kossak,
The Blaze: Reminiscences of Volhynia 1917–1919,
London, 1927, p. 13.

3
Norman Davies,
Gods’ Playground: a History of Poland, Vol. I: The Origins to 1795,
Oxford, 1981, p. 145.

4
Gillaume Le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan,
A Description of Ukraine,
Cambridge, Mass., 1993, p. 106.

5
Adam Zamoyski,
The Polish Way,
London, 1987, p. 164.

6
De Beauplan,
Ukraine,
p. 14.

7
Zamoyski,
Polish Way,
p. 161.

8
H. Luzhnytsky,
Ukrainska tserkva mizh skhodom i zakhodom,
Philadelphia, 1954, p. 307.

9
De Beauplan,
Ukraine,
p. 14.

10
Ibid., pp. 12–13.

11
Volodymyr Sichynskyi,
Ukraine in Foreign Comments and Descriptions from the Vlth to the XXth Century,
New York, 1953, P. 90.

12
De Beauplan,
Ukraine,
p. 11.

13
The Travels of Macarius: Extracts from the Diary of the Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, written in Arabic by his son Paul, Archdeacon of Aleppo; in the years of their journeying
1652–1660, London, 1936, p. 21.

14
Sichynskyi,
Ukraine in Foreign Comments,
p. 57.

15
Ibid., p. 90.

16
Travels of Macarius,
p. 16.

17
Subtelny,
Ukraine: a History,
Toronto, 1988, p. 127.

18
Davies,
God’s Playground, Vol. I,
p. 532.

19
Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘The Premature Partnership’,
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2,
pp. 72, 80.

20
Interview with the author, November 1996.

1
Orest Subtelny,
The Mazepists: Ukrainian Separatism in the Eighteenth Century,
Boulder, 1981, p. 20.

2
Volodymyr Sichynskyi,
Ukraine in Foreign Comments and Descriptions from the Vlth to the XXth Century,
New York, 1953, p. 113.

3
Subtelny,
The Mazeppists,
p. 37.

4
Orest Subtelny,
Ukraine: a History,
Toronto, 1988, p. 164.

5
Ibid., p. 172.

6
Poems by Adam Mickiewicz,
ed. George Noyes, New York, 1944.

7
Nikolai Gogol,
Village Evenings near Dikanka and Mirgorod,
trans. Christopher English, Oxford, 1994, p. 257.

8
Anton Chekhov,
The Chekhov Omnibus: Selected Stories,
trans. Constance Garnett and Donald Rayfield, London, 1994, p. 32.

9
Vincent Cronin,
Catherine, Empress of All the Russias,
London, 1978, p. 249.

10
Kyrylo Rozumovsky, quoted in Cronin,
Catherine,
p. 247.

11
Patricia Herlihy,
Odessa: a History 1794–1914,
Cambridge, Mass., p. 34.

12
Ibid., p. 115.

13
Mark Twain,
The Innocents Abroad or the New Pilgrim’s Progress,
London, 1897, p. 355.

14
Herlihy,
Odessa,
p. 123.

15
Alexander Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin,
trans. James Falen, Oxford, 1995, p. 223.

16
Isaac Babel,
Collected Stories,
trans. David McDuff, London, 1994, p. 59.

17
Zenon Kohut,
Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy : Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate,
Cambridge, Mass., 1988, p. 263.

18
Nikolai Gogol,
Village Evenings,
p. 221.

19
Subtelny,
Ukraine,
p. 210.

20
Stefan Zweig,
Balzac,
London, 1947, p. 360.

21
Kohut,
Absorption of the Hetmanate,
p. 291.

22
Sichynskyi,
Ukraine in Foreign Comments,
p. 197.

23
Kohut,
Absorption of the Hetmanate,
p. 274.

1
Joseph Roth,
The Radetzky March,
trans. Joachim Neugroschel, London, 1995, pp. 131, 152.

2
Norman Davies,
God’s Playground: a History of Poland, Vol. II: 1795 to the Present,
Oxford, 1981, p. 155.

3
Clifford Sifton, quoted in Orest Subtelny,
Ukraine: a History,
Toronto, 1988, p. 546.

4
Michael Hrushevsky,
A History of Ukraine,
ed. O. J. Frederiksen, New Haven, 1941, p. 480.

5
Alexander Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin,
trans. James Falen, Oxford, 1995, p. 70.

6
Pavlo Zaitsev,
Taras Shevchenko: a Life,
trans. George Luckyj, Toronto, 1988, p. 43.

7
Ibid., p. 55.

8
Ibid., p. 47.

9
Taras Shevchenko,
Song Out of Darkness: Selected Poems,
trans. Vera Rich, London, 1961, p. 38.

10
Zaitsev,
Shevchenko,
p. 59.

11
Ibid., p. 68.

12
Ibid., p. 63.

13
Ibid., p. 89.

14
Ibid., p. 144.

15
Shevchenko,
Song Out of Darkness,
p. 113.

16
Ibid., p. vii.

17
Paul Robert Magocsi,
A History of Ukraine,
Toronto, 1996, p. 369.

18
Subtelny,
Ukraine,
p. 315.

19
Ivan Franko,
Poems and Stories,
trans. John Weir, Toronto, 1956, p. 151.

20
Thomas Prymak,
Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture,
Toronto, 1987, p. 29.

21
Ibid., p. 31.

1
A. J. P. Taylor,
The Habsburg Monarchy: 1809–1918,
London, 1964, p. 284.

2
Gregor von Rezzori,
The Snows of Yesteryear,
trans. H. F. Broch de Rotherman, London, 1990, p. 98.

3
Ibid., p. 276.

4
Gregor von Rezzori,
The Hussar,
trans. Catherine Hutter, London, 1960, p. 8.

5
Von Rezzori,
Snows of Yesteryear,
p. 281.

6
Isaac Babel,
Collected Stories,
trans. David McDuff, London, 1994, p. 91.

7
Ibid., p. 222.

8
Ibid., p. 129.

9
Richard Pipes,
Russia under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924,
London, 1994, p. 109.

10
Orest Subtelny,
Ukraine: a History,
Toronto, 1988, p. 346.

11
Arnold Margolin,
From a Political Diary: Russia, the Ukraine and America 1905–1945,
New York, 1946, p. 30.

12
Thomas Prymak,
Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture,
Toronto, 1987, p. 158.

13
Ibid., p. 172.

14
Mikhail Bulgakov,
The White Guard,
trans. Michael Glenny, London, 1971, p. 57.

15
Ibid., p. 58.

16
Mikhail Bulgakov,
Manuscripts Don’t Burn,
ed. J. A. E. Curtis, London, 1991, p. 1.

17
Sholem Schwartzbard, ‘Memoirs of an Assassin’, in Lucy Dawido-wicz’s
The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe,
London, 1967, p. 455.

18
Alan Sharp,
The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919,
London, 1991, pp. 26–7.

19
Margolin,
Political Diary,
p. 59.

20
Ibid., pp. 39–41.

21
Julia Namier,
Lewis Namier, a Biography,
Oxford, 1971, p. 144.

22
Ibid., pp. 144–5.

23
Mykola Neskuk, Volodymyr Repryntsev and Yevhen Kaminsky, ‘Ukraine in Foreign Documents and Strategies in the Twentieth Century’,
Politichna Dumka
2–3. 95, p. 176.

24
Joseph Roth,
The Radetzky March,
trans. Joachim Neugroschel, London, 1995, p. 129.