Speakers of Ukrainian and Russian continue their seesaw struggle for dominance

Eastern and Western cultures duel in Ukraine

By Robert W. Merry

Viktor Yanukovych may be gone as president of Ukraine. New elections may bring to power the opposition forces that emerged in response to his faulty leadership. Western politicians and journalists may see these events as a triumph of democracy over oligarchy and a righteous slap at Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs.

After this current drama plays out, however, two realities will remain unchanged, and they are the two most important realities guiding the fate of this troubled country.

The first is that Ukraine will still be what the late Samuel Huntington of Harvard called a “cleft country” — meaning one that encompasses two distinct and often antagonistic cultures. 

The western portion is dominated by people who identify with Europe, who look to the pope in Rome for religious guidance, who speak Ukrainian and are ardent nationalists. The country’s eastern lands, on the other hand, are dominated by people who are Orthodox in religious identity, who speak Russian, and who derive a significant part of their identity from Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s fate over the past 450 years.

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The second reality is that Russia will never fully relinquish its influence over Ukrainian politics, for two reasons. 

The first is Russia’s geopolitical fate as a nation that lies vulnerable to invasion. Its unremitting grassy steppes extend from Europe to the Far East, with hardly a mountain range, seashore or major forest to hinder encroachment by army or horde. This has generated a national obsession to control territory as a hedge against incursion, which has occurred from the West in each of the last two centuries and from many directions during previous centuries.

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