How do you justify the wholesale slaughter of 100,000 of your own nation’s men? Russia believes that its 1000 years of close history with regard to Ukraine will convince the public of its current war there. The Russian government has engaged in a revisionist remaking of the past millennium of Russo-Ukrainian history — a false narrative which denies Ukraine of its history as a nation and its right to exist independently. The Russian government has also accused Ukraine of Nazism (a refrain that recalls the Soviet losses of over twenty-four million people to Hitler in WWII) by spreading virulent propaganda about a large and threatening fascist presence in Ukraine (never mind that Ukraine’s president is Jewish).
At Fieldston, this war has been a widely discussed issue. It has been discussed in clubs, classes, and in every other location where healthy debate occurs — as is natural at a school where politics hold great importance. Less often mentioned are Russian and Ukrainian history, even though the war and history are deeply related. To understand why so many people both in and out of Russia support what the West views as an unjustified war of aggression, we need to know how Russian history is being used to propagate false ideas which have led to war.
Much of Russian leadership has repeatedly denied the existence of a unique Ukrainian history or nation separate from Russia. Russia’s argument comes from the deeply linked origins of these two nations. Putin claims that Ukraine is a part of Russia. Both Russia and Ukraine descend from the world’s first Slavic state, the Kyivan Rus’. This state came into existence more than a thousand years ago, and according to those in the Russian camp, Russia and Ukraine have been one and the same since then. In 2014, during the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin affirmed that Russians and Ukrainians, “are one people. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus’ is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” Vladimir Putin is wrong here; despite having similar genesis stories, Russia and Ukraine have distinct histories and today the two nations retain numerous differences.
In the beginning of the 14th century, the southwestern regions of the Kyivan Rus’, lands which are today part of Ukraine, were conquered by Poland-Lithuania. For around 400 years, these lands would be ruled by Poland-Lithuania, and as a result, would grow culturally unique from the former parts of the Kyivan Rus that fell under Mongol and later Muscovite rule. These two different regions, while both former parts of the Kyivan Rus, were already starting to see these differences emerge around 7 centuries ago. Toward the end of the Kyivan Rus, a unique Ukrainian language had also begun to emerge, and between the 15th and 17th centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Churches of Moscow and Kyiv developed as separate entities from one another.
After hundreds of years of these two peoples growing ever-more distinct, the lands of Ukraine would eventually be absorbed by the Russian Empire – starting in the early 17th century and being fully incorporated by 1793. Ukraine remained under Russian control until 1917, the year in which the Russian Empire fell into disarray. As civil war engulfed the former empire, Ukraine was able to achieve some degree of independence. However after a few years of war, the lands of Ukraine were eventually divided by Poland and the USSR, where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established.
Upon becoming part of the Soviet Union, any sort of Ukrainian national identity was repressed, and the Ukrainian people suffered immensely under Soviet rule. During the years 1932 and 1933, between 3 and 5 million Ukrainians died from starvation due to Soviet policy. However, this tragedy brought about a revival of the Ukrainian national identity – an identity which the Russian leadership at the time, like now, hoped to destroy. While Ukraine and Russia are similar, they simply cannot be equated to one in the same, as Vladimir Putin has done. Ukraine hopes that this time they will be able to hold on to their identity in the face of an attempted Russification.
The other major false idea that the Russian government has been using to justify its war in Ukraine is a supposed widespread presence of Nazis. In Russia, World War II (or the Great Patriotic War as it is known to Russians) and the USSR’s destruction of the Nazis is a point of tremendous national pride. During World War II the Nazis committed unspeakable crimes in the USSR, including the murder of over 2 million Soviet Jews, the deaths of between 3 and 5 million Soviet POWs captured by the Nazis, and indiscriminate massacres of civilians. In total, around 24 million Soviet people died in the Second World War – yet the nation was victorious. Even the mention of Nazism recalls memories of those heady days — viewed by many as the finest hour of Russia.
According to a 2017 poll, a plurality of Russian people–34%–saw World War II as the most important point in the past century of Russian history, and the percentage is even higher among people with confidence in Vladimir Putin. So by claiming that Nazis are largely prevalent in Ukraine and that a genocide against Russians is being conducted, Vladimir Putin has been able to rally many more people in support of the war. He has taken the most unifying possible part of Russian history, and falsely used it to support this Russian war of aggression. Farcically, Putin claims that Ukraine’s Jewish leader is at the vanguard of a Nazi revival impinging upon the freedom of the Slavic world. Less often mentioned is the fact that Ukraine, as a former component of the Soviet Union, suffered just as Russia did from World War II.
By utilizing Russian history, a history in which the Russian people have great pride, Vladimir Putin and the Russian government hope to convince the Russian people that their sacrifices in the interest of his war are worthy of the blood of their sons and brothers. Thus far, the propaganda claiming that Ukraine is a Nazi puppet regime has been largely successful in Russia. The Russian government has been able to use this propaganda to convince many Russian people that this war is not only justified, but necessary.