Ukraine existed before Lenin, but USSR has nothing to do with it: Putin hints at something else

Knowing history is usually of little use, because politics always seems to be superior to it. But sometimes politics goes back in history deliberately to justify itself. The speech with which Putin addressed the world, but above all to justify the recognition of his people, the separatists donbass And threatening Ukraine is steeped in history. of a story seen through the eyes of Fly, something. But since this is history, not politics, one can try to determine whether what he said is true or not. And it is to a large extent. There is no dearth of sources to drink, latest and most updated by us History and geopolitics of the Ukrainian crisis. From ‘Kievan Rus’ till today by Giorgio Sella.

The millennium bond between present-day Slavic populations Ukraine and current Russia It is indisputable. Indeed, as Putin reiterated in a long article a few weeks ago, Russia is the daughter of Kievan Rus, the first state configuration in countries where Christian-Orthodox religion replaced previous creeds with cultural significance of the same. Corresponding, for example, to the conversion of the Franks in the West. partly to break that unity, partly to push it north towards the present nerve centers of Russia Mongol push Which effectively destroyed Kiev in 1240, which had already been weakened by medieval tendencies of dynastic and great fragmentation. Those vast plains would take centuries, whose only geographic point of reference, on which are rivers to anchor the borders, for a state, Eastern but not Asian, to improve. that he was not Ukrainian, but baltic,

The land of conquest for Polish-Lithuanians, Christians who came down from the north, and Turks, Muslims who came from the south, more or less simultaneously with the actual birth of Russia, when the princes of Moscow found themselves in inheritance. The cultural reputation of conservative world leaders Constantinople, Moscow became the third Rome, and the prince, who became the tsar, became the “patron” of that acumen and, later, of the entire Slavic world. To be something Ukrainian, at least in a geographical, independent sense, the Hetmanti Cossackswe have to wait for the time Fiance, An example I choose not by chance, given that the book speaks of a Spanish Lombardy, to say simply how far “politically” that position is, from today or from the last century.

This, book by book, is the time of Taras Bulba, and soon thereafter the Cossack leader will hold an election that, historically, brings us to our time. They would choose to ally with Charles XII’s Sweden against Russia. Peter the Great, Yes, Sweden. Who remembers today that they were there, on the territory of Ukraine, in Poltava, fighting the Russians for control of Eastern Europe? and lose. Do you know pietro mica, Today history is not studied for editing episodes, but we are at the far beginning of the eighteenth century. And just as the story that leads piece by piece to the unification of Italy begins with those savoy events, so does the story from those other events that lead to the definition.Russian Empire within its widest range.

The union of the two Slavic branches of history became a successful achievement for two centuries. Full? A thousand cultural factors come into play here. The unification of Italy is complete, if we still have the Neo-Bourbons today and the supporters of the first Northern League. padania With much less historical roots than Ukraine? Is Spanish perfect? And Scotland? And Belgium, in fact, exists. History tells us yes, probably. in present.

an error Putin He does this, intentionally I think, when with a bossy face he threatens to de-communize the Ukrainians to him. Because it commemorates the communist birth of Ukraine, whose borders we see in the atlas today. Who knows, remember the advertisement of what was being sold in the early nineties, the Russian cosmonaut who returned to earth happy to find his feet back on Russian soil and the old peasant woman told him “Is Russia, Ukraine? !” The boundaries set by Lenin in the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, one of which was precisely Ukraine. a Novel bureaucracyAssigned a “solution”, Stalin thinks about the problem of how communist Russia can free itself from the paradox of taking the place of an empire. How can the revolution and subversion of the old social order be declared, without leaving the people, whom that empire has colonized and conquered, their freedom and self-determination. just to say: United States of america He solved the problem of conscience for Native Americans with some casinos, certainly not with respect to treaties on Indian territories.

For a movement contemplating the creation of a new individual in the name of proletarian internationalism, borders and ethnicities were clearly past legacies that had vanished in the future sun. But here Putin is wrong. on a perfect map in real time Ukraine confronts Leninist alternatives, The Prussian generals pulled it out, defeating first the Tsarist army, then Kerensky, and finally the newborn. Army Red, In anticipation of Hitler’s Lebensraum, Ludendorff more or less borders the Prussian vassal states where the Swastika armies will also reach. The Baltic countries, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, as well as Ukraine until the Don are under the direct economic control of Berlin, the Turks take back what they had lost with the Caucasus during the nineteenth century, becoming Crimea, or rather, it Should become – not in time – a Tatar republic to send the Germans on holiday.

Russia is deprived of a third of the population of the tsar. Ukraine, that is the symbol of Ukraine,humiliation of Russia. Plans for a new European order with pointy helmets have been dashed in the fields of France. But that Ukraine remains an enemy of Moscow. Under General Denikin’s control of the counter-revolutionaries, while they were there, their troops lent themselves to a classic of those areas: the massacres of Jewish civilians formed one of the three branches of the counter-offensive, helped by From the British, American, French, Japanese, German, Poles, Czech (also a few hundred Italians from Vladivostok) Communists wanted to wipe Russia off the face of the earth immediately. they did not succeed, Twenty years later, as we know it, things repeated themselves in a rapid and dramatic way.

Once again Ukraine was the epitome of Russian and this time Soviet humiliation. big bag of KievHundreds of thousands of prisoners. Recurrence of pogroms in the genocide version, including Stranger, We Italians. Rodina, with his boots on the soil of the Motherland, Holy Russia, on which Putin once again depended yesterday. And then for the third time in a century, with the collapse of the USSR, Separation, Legal and legitimate, albeit bizarre. Since the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic exists, only Ukrainians vote on their independence. Would like a bit like Catalan. In Spain, it seems, this does not apply. If they voted together with all Russians, it would end in America like in 1860: secession, not independence. All with the right to force Lincoln to reunite.

Putin points out, cynical and alarming, ironically “I’ll give you de-communization”. Plus donbass it really looks like kosovoCompared to Serbia, Bombs too our, to guarantee self-determination and to revise the limits, the ban here, for now, ours too to prevent it. final separation. Fixed? Every prince of Kiev, every tsar, every ataman, every general thought that his balance was fixed. Whereas, as we have seen, nothing is certain. Push centrifuge For those who want to escape the yoke of Moscow, against the gravitational pull of what is, and remains, the dominant force of those lands. When newspapers write that Putin Wants to rebuild the USSR They try to put – they need to avoid being called anti-Russian – an anti-communist spin, in a story that has nothing to do with communism, older than nine centuries, younger than thirty years.

The game Putin brings with the speech on TV is Russia, the empire, tsarism as the “natural” form of power in Moscow. Very long lasting stuff, the stuff on which millennial identity is built. Ignoring these can lead to fatal mistakes.