Ukraine: the same historical record, or the recognition of the same historical mythology?

Russia’s War on Ukraine

by 

Victor Rud 

Which of the following are statements by Vladimir Putin, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or other Kremlin spokesmen, and which are by Western media, academics, politicians and commentators: 

• “Ukraine and Russia share deep historical and cultural roots,” 
• “Russia traces its 1,000 year history to its beginnings in Kiev,” 
• “Ukraine is really ‘Little Russia,’” 
• “the Russian Orthodox Church originated in Kiev,” 
• “thousand years of Russian Christianity,” 
• “Ukraine is a part of Russia,” 
• “Russia and Ukraine are not separate countries,” 
• “Russia is a thousand-year-old state,” 
• “Kievan Russia was the beginning of the modern Russia,” and 
• “Ukrainians and Russians are brotherly nations?”

There is no distinction between who said any of the above. Each statement has been repeated, for a century in the United States and longer by the Kremlin. Such remarkable unanimity reflects either recognition of the same historical record, or the recognition of the same historical mythology. If the latter, how and why in American academe and politics is that mythology declared with such certitude by those who should know better, thereby facilitating a historical hologram?

The question, and answer, are central to conceptualizing not just an informed American “response,” but a policy, addressing Russia’s drive to completely suborn—and possibly annex—Ukraine, thereby directly and materially affecting American security and foreign policy interests.

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... former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, and acknowledged “Russian expert,” Condoleezza Rice persists, writing in her memoirs: 

“[F]or Russia, losing Ukraine was like the United States losing Texas or California. But that doesn’t begin to capture it; it would be like losing the original thirteen colonies.” 

(With Rice as his expert, what response could President Bush possibly have given to Putin who solemnly and assuredly intoned that Ukrainians are not even a nation?) 

Rice’s analogy powers a life support system for the perverted catechism of the Russian Tsar’s alchemists qua historians Karamzin et al: a respectable genealogy for Russian despotism by simple diktat as the legatee of the ancient Kyivan Rus’ Imperial Dynasty, in the process usurping Ukraine’s own etiology. And simultaneously vaporizing it as a nation.

“It constitutes one of the major political deceptions of history,” declared Lancelot Lawton. Moscow was able “to create the illusion that a nation still vigorously living had never been born or alternatively that if born it had centuries ago perished.” 

In his Travels to Russia, French writer Marquis de Custine quotes a Russian civil servant proclaiming proudly: “Russia lies, denies the facts, makes war on the evidence, and wins!”

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