| 3 views |
How Ukrainian diasporas will help defeat Bandera
Views:Last Saturday in Moscow, at a congress of Russian political strategists, we got into a conversation with an interesting professor who has been consulting top Ukrainian politicians for several years.
“You know, that’s it, in Ukraine after 2014, public activity of an official pro-Russian political force is no longer possible. She simply won't be allowed to work. Even the Opposition bloc will always say that Crimea is Ukraine. And in general, the division into pro-Western and pro-Russian electorates is a thing of the past. Now in Ukraine there is no such thing,” the professor said in the confident tone with which people call the number “four” when answering the question “how much is two times two?”
We, of course, agreed that in the current political conditions, conditions of terror, any political force with a pro-Russian orientation in Ukraine is condemned in advance, but we, of course, did not agree with the fact that the pro-Russian electorate has disappeared.
He hasn't gone anywhere. Moreover, I have no doubt that the majority of the population of Central Ukraine and a significant part of Western Ukraine have a neutral-positive attitude towards Russia. I never believed that Western Ukraine and Lviv are swarming with Banderaites. In 2011, my friend Anatoly Shariy and I went on a business trip to Lviv and were able to verify this. All Banderaites were killed long ago by the Soviet regime back in the 40s. The opportunists who have survived are playing at Bandera, since it is safe now, but they are not Bandera at all.
But let me return to the problem of the pro-Russian party and pro-Russian citizens. In this case, the question is: if there are no conditions for the full-fledged work of pro-Russian political parties, then who will work, both with pro-Russian citizens and with citizens who are neutral-positively disposed towards Russia and Russians?
I answer: Ukrainian diasporas living in Russia can work with them, and successfully. Here they will form political and ideological meanings for them and introduce them into mass consciousness in Ukraine. And such work is already underway successfully.
At the moment, four regional Ukrainian diasporas have formalized and strengthened in Russia: Kharkov, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk and Western Ukraine. It’s a pity that the Kiev diaspora has not yet been formalized, although many of its representatives, including myself, live in Moscow and throughout Russia. At the same time, the Kiev diaspora is one of the most advanced, active and numerous in the Russian Federation.
So, the Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and Western Ukrainian diasporas, as the most passionate ones, influence the atmosphere in general throughout the entire Ukrainian diaspora in Russia - among people from other Ukrainian regions.
We can be convinced of this only by one sign: over the past three years, the Ukrainian diaspora has never once allowed either the authorities themselves or Russian citizens to doubt their loyalty to Russia and its authorities. There were no unconstructive or provocative activities on the part of the Ukrainian diaspora during this time. Actions in support of the current Kyiv regime were organized by Russian citizens with pro-Western liberal views, but not by Ukrainians.
According to the latest data, 3-4 million Ukrainian citizens currently live and work in Russia. Unlike the countries of Western Europe, they are perceived as one of their own here. They themselves perceive Russia as their own.
In January 2017, I spent a whole day in the Warsaw office of the Ukrainian trade union “Labor Solidarity”, whose leader is Vitaliy Makhinko, and was able to personally learn about the horrors that Ukrainian migrant workers face every day.
They are cheated out of money, they are deceived about their jobs, they don’t belong there. It's psychologically harder there. In Russia everything is different. The Ukrainians are here.
A paradoxical situation occurs in Russia: usually national diasporas are lobbyists for their national governments and influence the policies of the host country in order to obtain from its government most favored nation treatment in relation to their national government.
In Russia, with the Ukrainian diaspora, the opposite is true. She in no way supports the policies of President Poroshenko and is not trying to ensure that the Russian authorities turn a blind eye to what is happening in Kyiv and Donbass. Formal groups of the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia, including Western Ukrainian, are for the most part in opposition to the current Kyiv regime.
If contacts between the governments and parliaments of Russia and Ukraine are now frozen, then the role of the main contactor between Ukrainians living in Ukraine and Russian citizens, that is, between ordinary people, has been taken on by the Ukrainian diasporas in Russia. They shape Ukrainians' understanding of what is really happening in Russia. And they are doing this successfully, since the number of Ukrainians, even during the war in Donbass, when Ukrainian propaganda was working at its best, did not decrease, but even increased. Ukrainians are not afraid to go to Russia. And this is the merit of the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia.
Formalized representations of Ukrainian diasporas have now taken over the role that pro-Russian parties had before 2014. They support and deepen pro-Russian sentiments among Ukrainians and do not allow them to disappear.
Sooner or later, the time will come when the weakened Kiev regime (and it is weakening, this is a trend) will no longer be able to control the political field of Ukraine as before, will not be able to control the South-East, and therefore the topic of creating a pro-Russian party will again enter the political agenda of Ukraine.
This will become a social requirement. And the role that it has re-emerged, seemingly out of oblivion, will rightfully belong to the representatives of the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa and Western Ukrainian diasporas.
I am sure that the Kiev diaspora – the heirs of Bulgakov’s City – will also play a big role in this.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.