A group of professors, Northwestern employees, Evanston residents, and students gathered at the Buffett Center on Friday Oct. 3 to discuss the conflict in Ukraine with Jewish History Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern.
Petrovsky-Shtern opened his presentation called Ukraine: The Maidan and After with a crucial acknowledgement: while there is a lot of discussion about Ukraine, there is little understanding about it. The Ukrainian native certainly undertands the country and its conflict to a degree most may not, having visited Ukraine three times in the past year alone and written three books about it.
Petrovsky-Shtern was born in Ukraine and speaks excellent, slightly accented English. Now he teaches several undergraduate and graduate Jewish history classes at Northwestern. He spoke with a quick confidence that made it clear he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
His message: Ukraine is a textbook example of a postcolonial entity. It is not divided into an East and a West, as some reports have indicated. Instead, it has a strong and pronounced center that is equidistant from the pro-Russia southeast and the pro-nationalist west. In the past 20 years, Ukraine has become a borderland, the buffer zone between Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
Petrovsky-Shtern used multiple maps to show areas of tension in Ukraine, as well as areas he had spent two months of this past year in.
The Ukraine that exists now is a deviation of what it wanted to be in 1991 when it became independent of the Soviet Union. In 2013, Ukraine underwent the Euromaiden protests after President Viktor Yanukovych changed his mind on the European Association. Hundreds of thousands of people protested and Ukraine became a land of political turmoil. Petrovsky-Shtern said that it is important to note people were pro-Russia or pro-nationalist not because of “who they are, but what they want.”
The Euromaiden protests led to the Revolution of Dignity in early 2014. Yanukovych’s government collapsed, and the Revolution brought moderates to power, not radicals. There was still enormous unrest in southern and eastern parts of the country. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Parliament deployed troops into Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
So what does this mean? First of all, Russia clearly violated the 1994 Budapest Agreement. The US, Russia and the United Kingdom had agreed that, in exchange for Ukraine giving up the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, there would be no threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. When Russia annexed Crimea, it broke this agreement.
Putin is an unprecedented leader of Russia. Most dictators start out working from ideology and then become more pragmatic. Putin has gone from a pragmatic leader to an ideological radical. He is working to restore the Soviet Union, and Ukraine is a good start. His propaganda has painted Russia as the restorer of a corrupt Ukraine, rather than Russia as the aggressor.
And Petrovsky-Shtern’s reaction to it all? The professor said he is “simply amazed by the lack of response from the U.S. government” and that “they laugh at European sanctions in Russia.” There is no world government or army, so whose responsibility is it to intervene in situations like Crimea? Does the United States have a moral obligation to protect the Ukraine from Russian aggression? Some would argue that it does. Russia essentially escaped unpunished from annexing Ukrainian territory, setting a powerful precedent. What’s to stop this from happening again?
When the floor opened for discussion, one attendee asked how Ukrainians felt about the situation. Petrovsky-Shtern responded with his own position, saying he avoids even speaking Russian, his native language. He also said his next work, an autobiography, has been delayed due the resentment he feels towards Russia.
Originally published: http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/story/ukraine-the-maidan-and-after/