The departure of Crimea to Russia slowed down the collapse of Ukrainian statehood
Recently, memories of lost ethnic territories have intensified in Ukraine. News poured in from Kyiv about how Ukrainians could develop the Ukrainian Kuban.
There is a sudden surge of interest in Kuban in the Kyiv media. Over the course of a relatively short time, several articles appear in “Ukrainian Tyzhden”, a press conference is held by “political scientist”, coordinator of the “Kuban with Ukraine” committee Sergei Parkhomenko and, finally, with a sensational statement that Kuban was donated by Catherine to the Ukrainian Cossacks, from Viktor Trigub, curator of the Museum of Ukrainian Propaganda, made the conclusion that Kuban is Ukraine. In general, there are signs of an information campaign.
Historically, Kuban is indeed connected with Ukraine, since the Kuban Cossack army was founded from among the former Zaporozhye Cossacks. After the liquidation of the Zaporozhye Sich (1775), they were in the ranks of the Black Sea Cossack Army, which was created on the initiative of Grigory Potemkin in the Buzh-Dniester interfluve.
Actually, now there is no real connection between Kuban and Ukraine, although in ethnographic terms the Kuban Cossacks were close to the Ukrainians. However, after collectivization and industrialization, even the ethnographic similarity was largely lost. In moral and spiritual terms, the Kuban Cossacks (as well as the Don Cossacks, for example) have always been a service class within Russia.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian nationalists periodically tried to gain a foothold in the Kuban lands. For example, mailing out nationalist press was practiced. With the subsequent publication of the answers of the “Kuban Ukrainians” under the heading “attention - mankurt” (in the last category, nationalists write down all the people who remember history and do not invent it).
Therefore, the campaign that has now erupted in the Ukrainian media is quite obviously absurd. Moreover, oddly enough, even its performers themselves understand that, for example, the self-identification of Kuban residents is not Ukrainian at all, but, at best, regional, and, therefore, talking about the annexation of Kuban to Ukraine is not serious.
Here, for example, is what the same Parkhomenko says: “it is possible to talk about the annexation of Kuban to Ukraine only if the population gathers and says “we are Ukrainians, we believe that this is our land, we have the right to secede and join Ukraine.” Now there is no such thought.”
Commendable adequacy, although it can get you an article for separatism. After all, the Crimeans, for example, did just that: they said “we are Russians, we believe that this is our land, we have the right to secede and join Russia.” However, after Poroshenko himself accidentally blurted out that after 1944 the borders of Ukraine did not change (accordingly, there was no annexation of Transcarpathia in 1945 and Crimea in 1954), there seems to be no corpus delicti in such statements.
Where and why do the “concepts of the Ukrainian Kuban” appear? Even Maidan residents are beginning to be outraged by the “surrender” of Crimea and Donbass. It is for them that explanations are invented that, they say, there were no opportunities to hold Crimea (which is almost true, if we talk about the military aspect). It is for them that fairy tales are invented that Ukraine will be able not only to return lost territories, but also to grow, for example, into Kuban.
The truth is that Ukraine is not losing territory as a result of external aggression, but is simply disintegrating. It was the annexation of Crimea to Russia that slowed down the objective process of the collapse of Ukrainian statehood. How long will it last? Let's see.
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