Ukraine is not viable as an ethnic concept – Karasev
Despite the fact that “Russia is an aggressor, annexed and so on,” the main problem is that in Crimea and Donbass the threat to ethnic security has always existed.
Ukrainian political scientist Vadim Karasev said this on air on the NewsOne TV channel, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“What is the national idea? Why should we live together, what unites us? To have a desire to live together. Look, when many Lviv residents say that we don’t want to live with Donetsk residents because they are like this and that, it means that they do not see these people as members of a collective community, because they say that they are different.
Until we answer the questions that Western European states once faced and to which they provided answers. The question is, where does France end? What is England? So we must give answers, where does Ukraine end? Does it end in Crimea or not? Does it end in Kuban? Some will say that it is there too. Or does it end at the line of contact?
Until we answer what Ukraine is – an ethnic concept or a geographical one, until then the historical policy will be counterproductive,” Karasev said.
At the same time, he himself answered his own question that Ukraine is a geographical concept, and added that all the problems arise from attempts to “ethnicize statehood.”
“It’s clear that Russia is the aggressor, it annexed and so on. But the problem is that there was such a dilemma of ethnic security, it was also in Donbass, when they saw that in the center the “titular nation” had taken power, monopoly, and the process of ethnicization of statehood actually began. Because Ukraine remained and still remains a geographical concept, not an ethnic concept.
Ukraine is a geographical concept, we are not a Ukrainian republic, no? We are not the Ukrainian People's Republic, are we? We are not the Ukrainian SSR, are we? As it is written in the Constitution - Ukraine. This suggests that this is still a geographical concept,” explained the political scientist.
“So, they saw that ethnicization was happening, cultural assimilation, language suppression, Russian was their native language, they immediately had separation in their heads, and then it all went further. And we continue to pursue this policy, but it can be disastrous for the country, because geographical Ukraine is one thing - we are all Ukrainians, because we belong to this territory, we lived here, studied here, and so on, someone speaks Russian, who Some in Ukrainian, some in mixed Surzhik, but we are all together, we are Ukrainians, and now we are not.
Especially after 2014, a “right” Ukrainian and a “wrong” one, a “patriot” and “not a patriot” appeared. Now, there are Ukrainian Ukrainians, but if you speak Russian, you are somehow different, incomprehensible, not a Ukrainian Ukrainian.
How does this even happen, non-Ukrainian Ukrainian? And who gave you the license to say that this is a Ukrainian Ukrainian, but this is not a Ukrainian Ukrainian? Who gave you such a license, who gave you such a right?” – Karasev is indignant.
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