Vladislav Zubok

The post-Soviet roots of the war in Ukraine

A statue of Lenin in Sevastopol, 2003 (photo: Getty)

In his hour-long speech earlier this week setting out why he was invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin blamed Vladimir Lenin, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists and the West for starting the conflict. Meanwhile, many in the West believe that the conflict is entirely the creation of one man, Putin himself. It’s worth though remembering the post-Soviet roots of the current Russian-Ukrainian war and how close the two nations came to blows 30 years ago.

After the failure of a reactionary coup in Moscow in August 1991, the victorious Russian democrats led by Boris Yeltsin wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union’s ‘totalitarian empire’ and join Nato. The main challenge to their plans was not the Soviet Union’s defeated KGB and generals, but the ever-present danger of Russian nationalism filling the vacuum left by communism. The fear was that the Soviet Union would follow the path of Yugoslavia and descend into violent ethnic conflict.

Just days later, in Kyiv, Ukrainian leaders, most of them communist apparatchiks, immediately declared their independence. They also announced that their independence and sovereignty were final and unconditional; and they had no territorial claims over Russia and other post-Soviet republics. In Moscow even some liberal democrats were startled by this declaration. The borders of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the two largest republics in the Soviet Union, had been drawn up by Lenin and Stalin, and Khrushchev transferred ‘Russian Crimea’ as a gift to the Ukrainian Soviet republic in 1954. The Ukrainian leaders were now declaring that Crimea unconditionally belonged to the new Ukrainian nation.

The recently elected Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, was also upset. He had expected Russia and Ukraine to stay in some kind of a union, much like England and Scotland. He ordered his press secretary to announce that if Ukraine wanted to go it alone, then Russia would have its own territorial claims in the region.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in