LVIV, Ukraine — A few days ago a member of the German Green Party came to Lviv. I am a novelist and journalist, as well as a translator in German and Polish, and I sometimes write in those languages. He had read one of my articles, and he asked me to help him understand Ukraine: Too much of the reporting in the German press, he said, was biased by pro-Russian propaganda.
I was appalled to hear what many Germans thought of the Maidan protesters in Kiev — that they were nationalist extremists and anti-Semites, that all those victims they had heard about were merely collateral damage in a legitimate government attempt to stabilize the situation. In other words, the Moscow line.
I was not, however, surprised. While Russia may have invaded Crimea only a few days ago, its war against Ukraine goes back much further. In fact, one might say that Russia has never not been at war with Ukraine, not even after the Ukrainian hetman, or leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, signed the Pereyaslav Agreement with the Russian czar in 1654. With that agreement, some of Ukraine’s territory became part of the Russian Empire, while the rest of it fell to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The agreement had promised autonomy to the Ukrainians; that promise was never fulfilled. Instead, Ukraine was transformed into the province of an empire, Russia’s warehouse and supplier, a population with no right to its own history, culture or state. Russia continued to wage this ideological war during the Soviet era: mass deportations, exiles, famines, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, sending them barehanded against German tanks in the name of Stalin.
In the western regions of Ukraine, the war began later, in 1945, when German occupation was replaced by Soviet occupation. Once begun, it would be more protracted, and more brutal. For years to come the western Ukrainians used guerrilla tactics in an attempt to overthrow the Soviet regime and establish an independent Ukrainian state. It was during this period that the stereotype of the Ukrainian-speaking renegade emerged: the country bumpkin ready to kill at the mere sound of Russian speech.
This war continues today, as the ideologues of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, are trying to sell their virtual reality not only to Ukrainians, but to the world. This latest phase of the war has been underway for three months, while Ukrainians kept watch on the Maidan, treated the wounded, held at bay those troops who were ready to slaughter their own people and fought for the right to create a new state, free of corruption, all the while stunned by the disinterest of the international community.
Now that Russia has declared not only virtual war on Ukraine, but also real war, now that the first conscripts have been mobilized by Kiev, we all realize that still worse lies in store for us.
On March 1, Maidan-affiliated activists were attacked by forces imported from Russia. Among the hundred or so injured was one of Ukraine’s most beloved poets, Serhiy Zhadan, whose head was sliced open in two places. The Russian flag was raised over buildings housing local governments. Just a few hours later videos appeared on YouTube showing these Russian agitators divvying up the money they were getting for their performances.
It is important to watch the ideological war playing out alongside the possibility of a military conflict. Mr. Putin wants Ukrainians and the world to believe that the eastern half of the country supports him. And, indeed, myths and stereotypes have a way of breeding along the country’s endless, poorly maintained roads. They are already deeply rooted in the Ukrainian mind: The myth of the aggressive nationalist from the west has long had as its counterpart the equally unfounded myth of the Russian-speaking easterner who, brainwashed by Russian propaganda, would take slavery in a totalitarian state over membership in NATO or the European Union.
These myths were most apparent during the Orange Revolution of 2004, and they have been used by both sides to gain power. In the east, people are terrified of the “Orange Plague”; in the west, people are terrified of “Donetsk criminals.” As long as these myths were believed, the political forces in question have been able to use power for their own gain, sustaining the people on political speculations and intimidation instead of enacting meaningful economic reforms.
But those myths are collapsing; that is what the 2014 protests were all about. Both eastern and western camps had a chance at ruling, and both failed. In doing so, they showed Ukrainians that the challenge was not between one region or another, but between the corrupt at the top and the people, whatever region they are from. Politicians today are finally being asked for plans of action that will actually achieve things, rather than populist slogans or ideological myths.
In recent days, in cities across the region, people have gathered to protest Russian aggression. Thanks to Mr. Putin, Ukraine has seen a rise not only in Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriots, but also “Russian-speaking Russophobes,” who identify as Russian but want nothing to do with him.
Russia’s ideological war with Ukraine is doomed to fail within Ukrainian society. Its victims exist only in the willful isolation of the pro-Russian media. Now we must avert the danger of real war — or else win it.
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