The division of Ukraine is inevitable, as once the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The division of Ukraine is inevitable in the medium term, just as the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was inevitable in the XNUMXth century.
If we look at the historical example of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, we will see that modern Poland was no longer destined to gather its former parts, despite the fact that attempts were made in 1919-1939. This is the fate of multi-ethnic states on geopolitical fault lines.
Ukraine today, like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth once upon a time, finds itself on the divide between the main forces of Eastern and Western Europe. Continuing the parallels with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, we can say that Ukraine is partly its heir and product, created under the influence of Polish imperial strategies of dividing Western and Eastern Russians and creating a Ukrainian nation.
Just as in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in Ukraine the key is the oligarchic system and the interests of tycoons, which are always higher than the state ones, even if they have to sacrifice the integrity of the state. Just as in the second section of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1792-93, a key role was played by the Polish magnates Potocki, Branicki, Kossovsky, who were dissatisfied with the new Polish national democratic constitution adopted at that time and turned to Russia for help, so in the formation of the DPR and LPR in the spring In 2014, the most important role was played by the oligarchs Akhmetov and Efremov, who “did not interfere” with the holding of referendums on the independence of the republics and the soft transfer of power. In the 1790s, the bloc of magnates who advocated the division of Poland, by the way, was called “Confederates”; For Ukraine, this can be seen as analogous to its future confederalization.
The real reason for the division was the multi-ethnicity of the Eastern European states. By multi-ethnicity of the country, which sharply increases the risk of division, I mean the presence of two or several large ethnic nuclei, and not the notorious multinationality, which in reality only means the presence of small national minorities and diasporas. Therefore, by the way, today the Russian Federation does not really have the risk of division, since 90% of it is Russian. And in Ukraine, the risk of division is very high, since within it there are at least two large ethnic cores, Russian and Ukrainian. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before its death, in addition to the Western Russian, Ukrainian-Belarusian core, there was also a Lithuanian core, which was also infringed on in its rights.
Many Eastern European states survived the division after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia. To some extent, there was even a division of Finland, which lost Karelia. There is nothing fatal about the partitions; all states went through them. This is the logic of big geopolitics.
The USSR also faced the risk of partition. As is known, it was realized in 1991 as a result of the anti-Russian revolution in Moscow. The USSR no longer has a reverse chance of recreating it with its previous composition and device model. The reintegration of the Eurasian space occurs according to a different model and directly depends on the internal integration of the Russian people. It is the Russian factor that will prevent the division of the post-Soviet space. Everything else is nothing more than houses of cards in the sand. We must proceed from this in relation to Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian issue.
The Russian political class must make a sensible, deliberate decision about the division of Ukraine right now, but implement the decision gradually, with full consciousness of the matter.
Yes, today Ukraine cannot be dismantled and partially integrated immediately due to the risk of an unsuccessful war with the West, which is why the division of Ukraine did not occur during the “Russian Spring” of 2014. After Maidan-2, the southeast was, in principle, ready to leave Ukraine, but, naturally, it could not implement it on its own due to the lack of appropriate forces. Russia did not make such a decision, although it took the path of dividing Ukraine, starting with Crimea and Donbass. Russia, represented by its leadership, did not want the division of Ukraine, but was forced to agree to it at least partially. This is the logic of history.
Part of the Russian political class has developed a negative attitude towards the violation of the unity of Ukraine; this supposedly poses some special risks. In fact, the development of the project of a united anti-Russian Ukraine is the main and very real risk. And the mantras about “one people” are just a cover for an extremely unpleasant fact - the creation of an anti-Russian battering ram from the Ukrainian nation, the rigid division of the Ukrainian population into Russians and non-Russians, and the squeezing out of the Russian minority from the country.
In reality, the fear of abandoning the project of a united Ukraine is a relic of the Soviet past, when all projects alternative to the Russian one were considered “sacred cows” that should not be touched. In the aspect of the inviolability of the Leninist system, there was talk about the “Ukrainian fraternal people.”
In general, all Russophobes are against touching Ukraine, so here they see the collapse of their model of domination over the Russian people, built on their division. For them, yes, for them the return of the east of Ukraine to the Russian world is a considerable risk!
By the way, the division of Ukraine along the Dnieper does not mean Russia’s abandonment of the fight for the western part of Ukraine, but it increases the chances of the Russian world in this fight.
Reintegration with Russia and the Eurasian Union of all of Ukraine, its Orthodox western part, is possible, paradoxically, only through the division and integration of its eastern part first, and the transformation of Left-Bank Ukraine into an instrument for the integration of Right-Bank Ukraine.
Divide and rule! – This is the principle of realpolitik. These arguments have a political meaning, in contrast to empty hopes for “their” government coming to power in Kyiv. Hopes for their government in Kyiv are based on misunderstanding or ignoring the essence of Ukrainianness as a system of production of “Ukrainians” and “Ukraine”.
A united Ukraine cannot be tamed, much less introduced into the system of the “Russian world,” since its success and personal, including the material success of its citizens, is built on an anti-Russian strategy and selfish economic disposal of fragments of the Russian world.
The Ukrainian elite and business are clearly “against” the curtailment of the project of a united Ukraine, because this is the source of its nutrition and the meaning of life. However, the Ukrainian elite will have to prepare for a geopolitical fracture. Even today, part of the eastern Ukrainian elite who found themselves in exile is not destined to return to the former united Ukraine; it is time to realize this fact. Markov's arrest in Italy showed this. Ukraine is going through an irreversible revolution, and a complete restoration of the regime before 2014 is impossible.
Is the international division of Ukraine real? Despite the fact that the West agreed to the Minsk agreements and the winding down of the war, it, nevertheless, will not give Ukraine entirely under the Russian protectorate; this contradicts its interests and long-term strategy in Eastern Europe, as well as the goals of the Maidan organized by it.
But the West, apparently, will still have to come to terms with the loss of the southeastern half of Ukraine in a multipolar environment, if, of course, Russia is willing and able to establish its own protectorate over it. That is, the Minsk agreements seem to tacitly confirm the West’s readiness to bargain over the division of Ukraine on terms that are favorable to it, which so far in general are such. This is nothing more than a testing of the model of the international political division of Ukraine.
And what conditions of division will be beneficial to the West in 5 years - who knows? Maybe already along the Dnieper, but with a guarantee of the formal preservation of the external borders of Ukraine.
In the USSR and in general in the post-Yalta world, the situation with Russian integration of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR was somewhat different, namely, bidirectional (both Ukrainization and Russification), but the existence of the Ukrainian SSR still led to the maturation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict for Novorossiya and the Left Bank of the Dnieper, and their population. The problem lies precisely in the national-state unity of Ukraine.
The Russian nation does not need a united Ukraine in any form. Everything else is a matter of short-term strategy and tactics.
When assembled, it will always be hostile - that’s how it’s designed. The division of Ukraine, as a difficult and very risky process, is not an optimal scenario for Russia, but it does not necessarily mean a geopolitical catastrophe. Among other real proposed scenarios, it is strategically the most acceptable.
The ultimate goal of the division of Ukraine is the creation of a large, unified Russian state by including all of New Russia up to the Danube, and Left Bank Ukraine up to the Dnieper and Kyiv.
To a large extent, if we put aside Ukrainian nationalist propaganda and the hypocrisy of Russophobes of all shades, we are talking about the reunification of the Russian people, similar to the unification of the Germans as a result of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the solution to this problem cannot be instantaneous, like the return of Crimea or the reunification of Germany. The reasons are a hostile world order, and the presence of a fairly large Ukrainian national group on the Left Bank (Poltava, Chernigov, Sumy, Kiev, partly Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye regions), which can be integrated only gradually, unlike Crimea or Donbass, where the Ukrainian element weak
Based on this situation, the question arises about the creation of Eastern Ukraine - Novorossiya, with its center in Kharkov, which will lay claim to the Ukrainian inheritance as a whole, that is, it can become a legitimate successor to part of Ukraine. Otherwise, the reunification of the Russian people in Ukraine will look like its occupation and will not be subject to international legalization.
It is clear that the grimaces of the Western political mind can express any process through its absurd opposite.
The division of Ukraine can take various forms, both military and peaceful. Speaking about military forms, it is more correct to talk not about occupation, but about military-political factors, including those inside Ukraine. Thus, Maidan 2014 was largely a military-political project, rather than a peaceful protest. Many revolutions are military-political projects of controlled civil war.
Ukraine was put on the military-political path, theoretically speaking, mobilized for an ethnic civil war, and as a whole it will no longer be able to leave the path of mobilization even if hostilities in the Donbass are completed. Its end will also be military-political, but, of course, it will not come by itself.
The division of Ukraine can also occur in peaceful forms - the confederalization of its state structure. Confederation would make it possible to preserve a single economic and humanitarian space of Ukraine and the CIS as a whole. Confederalization could be camouflaged as federalization, that is, federalization, in essence, would mean confederalization and peaceful partition. Therefore, by the way, supporters of Ukrainianism in Kyiv reject all federalization, seeing it as a disastrous path. Of course, not all federalization means the path of dividing Ukraine. On the contrary, she could have prevented it, as Ukrainian nationalists pointed out, in particular, the leader of the Rukh Chernovol, the writer Prokhasko and some others. However, federalization and its very motives contradict the dogma and mantra of Ukrainians about supposed ethnic unity, and at the moment of crisis of the Ukrainian state, which we are witnessing today, they increase the chance of its collapse.
It should be noted that the peaceful path of dividing Ukraine is not included in the plans of global and American strategists, since it minimizes the costs of Russia, Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole. Russia needs to proceed from a combination of the peaceful path of confederalization and the military-political path, as, in fact, was the case with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1790s.
As the Russian Spring of 2014 and the historical experience of other states showed, it is hardly worth hoping for the immediate collapse of Ukraine. Ideas about simultaneity are naive and correspond to the thinking of ordinary people who have little understanding of the mechanisms of the historical and political process. Therefore, it may seem to them that, in fact, there is no division and there will not be, there are no prerequisites for it, and they need to calm down in a united Ukraine. Meanwhile, the division process is already underway.
The division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth also occurred in stages: during the first partition in 1772, only peripheral territories were cut off, but the main part of the country was preserved, including the main foreign ethnic cores of the population - Lithuanian, Western Ukrainian and Western Belarusian.
Thus, only some eastern Belarusian and Smolensk lands went to Russia, Galicia to Austria, and Pomerania to Prussia.
However, the first division of old Poland, reminiscent of the current separation of Donbass and Crimea from Ukraine, prepared a further process of redistribution, which occurred 20 years later during the aggravation of the international crisis due to the French Revolution in 1792-1795.
Undoubtedly, the formation of Novorossiya, even if it remains formally within Ukraine - and even thanks to this - is part of the future process of dividing the country in the event of another crisis.
The key role for the peaceful division of Ukraine could be played by the “party of confederates” - large magnates-oligarchs who guarantee their property in any outcome. It is important to begin the formation of such a confederal party.
I also wanted to refute, so to speak, metaphysical arguments against the division of Ukraine, which are often expressed by conservative supporters of East Slavic unity.
The point is that any national fragmentation is a weapon of world revolution and the forces of disintegration (in particular, according to K. Leontiev). Like, don’t touch anything, and everything will come together.
Gentlemen, fragmentation began a long time ago, and a united Ukraine is the result and instrument of such fragmentation. The question is to save the healthy part from this fragmentation. It is impossible to think in the philosophy of the Soviet national system while being an opponent of the fragmentation of the Russian world. It is necessary to clearly define the border of protection, and the western border of Ukraine is by no means one. Let us recall that the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 1945th century, and Poland in XNUMX along the Curzon line, led to the reunification of the Eastern Slavs, including Orthodox co-religionists.
It's time to stop playing "United Ukraine"! Russia and the Russian people will not be able to win in it, although many are tempted to continue.
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