On Ukrainian Identity: Ukraine as a Buffer Zone

Editors note: If you’re like me and you love history this will give you some historical context as to what’s going on in Ukraine.

An imagined community

Ukraine is an Eastern European territory that was originally part of the western part of the Russian Empire and the eastern portion of the Polish Kingdom in the mid-17^th century (the division according to the 1667 Peace Treaty of Andrusovo). That is a present-day independent state and separate ethnolinguistic nation as a typical example of Benedict Anderson’s theory model of the “imagined community” – a self-constructed idea of the artificial ethnic and linguistic-cultural identity [see, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London‒New York: Verso, 1983]. Before 2014, Ukraine was home to some 46 million inhabitants of whom, according to the official data, there were around 77 percent who declared themselves as Ukrainians.

Nevertheless, many Russians do not consider the Ukrainians or Belarusians/Belarus as “foreign” but rather as the regional branches of the Russian nationality. It is a matter of fact that, differently to the Russian case, the national identity of Belarus or the Ukrainians was never firmly fixed as it was always in the constant process of changing and evolving [on the Ukrainian self-identity construction, see: Karina V. Korostelina, Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-Imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014].

The process of self-constructing identity of the Ukrainians after 1991 is, basically, oriented vis-à-vis Ukraine’s two most powerful neighbors: Poland and Russia. In other words, the self-constructing Ukrainian identity (like the Montenegrin or Belarusian) is just able to claim so far that the Ukrainians are not either the Poles or the Russians, but, however, what they really are is under great debate, and still it is not clear. Therefore, the existence of an independent state of Ukraine, nominally a national state of the Ukrainians, is of very doubtful indeed from both perspectives: historical and ethnolinguistic.

National self-determination

The principle of the so-called “national self-determination” became popular in East-Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe with the proclamation of Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” on January 8^th, 1918. However, as a concept, the principle was alive since the French Revolution, if not even before. The French Revolution itself supported a principle of national self-determination, which was already used in practice since the American Revolution (started in 1776), followed by the American War of Independence (ended in 1783) against the United Kingdom as a colonial master. In short, the concept is based on a principle that the source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. Therefore, the idea of a plebiscite was introduced as the political support for either independence or annexation of certain territories. For instance, France organized a plebiscite in order to justify the territorial annexation of Avignon, Savoy, and Nice in the 1790s. The same principle was used for the Italian and German unifications in the second half of the 19^th century or for the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in Europe by the Balkan states in 1912‒1913.

The new European political order after WWI was established according to the principle of national self-determination as the territories of East-Central and South-East Europe were fundamentally remapped. The new national states appeared, while some have been enlarged by the inclusion of their nationals from neighboring countries. Exactly using this principle, the four empires were destroyed: the German, the Ottoman, the Russian, and Austria-Hungary.

However, the same principle of national self-determination was not applied to all European nations for different reasons. One of them was that certain present-day known nations at that time were not recognized as such, at least not by the winning Entente powers. That was, in fact, the case of Ukrainians, or better to say, of those Ukrainians left behind the borders of the USSR. Those trans-Soviet Ukrainians were one of the losers of the Versailles System after 1918. While a large number of the smaller nations (compared to the Ukrainians), from Finland to the Balkans, were granted either state independence (for instance, the Baltic States) or inclusion into the united national state (for example, Greater Romania), Ukrainians were deprived of it.

Diferently to many other European nations, there were several Ukrainian political entities (state or federal unit) established during the years of 1917‒1920, either by the Germans or Bolsheviks. The Germans created a formally independent Ukrainian state in 1918, while the Bolsheviks established not only one Soviet Ukraine as a political entity within the Bolshevik state (later the USSR).

To be honest, there were several focal reasons why the Western winners did not create an independent Ukraine after WWI: 1) It could be considered as a German political victory on the former Eastern Front; 2) The country could be run by the nationalists close to the German concept of Mittel Europa and, therefore, Ukraine can become a German client state; 3) Independent Ukraine would be anti-Polish and anti-Semitic; 4) Independent Ukraine could become inclined to the Soviet side for the matter of the creation of a Greater Ukraine; 5) Many Westerners did not recognize an independent Ukrainian nation as a separate ethnolinguistic group; and 6) Ukraine as a federal entity already existed within the Soviet state.

Therefore, for all of above mentioned crucial reasons, the victorious powers after WWI decided not the sponsor the creation of an independent Ukrainian state as a national state of the “Ukrainians” applying the principle of national self-determination. Moreover, applying the historical rights, in 1923, the Entente powers gave reborn Poland Galicia and some other lands considered by the Ukrainian nationalists to be “Western” Ukraine. The Ukrainians within Poland did not get any national autonomy (differently to the case of the Soviet Ukraine) for the very reason they have not been recognized as a separate nation, i.e., an ethnolinguistic group.

Ukraine?

The Slavonic term Ukraine, for instance, in the Serbo-Croat case Krajina, means in the English language a Borderland – a provincial territory situated on the border between at least two political entities: in this particular historical case, between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the Republic of Both Nations (1569−1795), on one hand, and the Russian Empire, on another. It has to be noticed that according to the 1569 Lublin Union between Poland and Lithuania, the former Lithuanian territory of Ukraine passed over to Poland.

A German historical term for Ukraine would be a mark – a term for the state’s borderland which existed from the time of the Frankish Kingdom/Empire of Carl the Great. The term is mostly used from the time of the Treaty (Truce) of Andrusovo (Andrussovo) in 1667 between Poland-Lithuania and Russia. In other words, Ukraine and the Ukrainians as a natural objective-historical-cultural identity never existed, as it was considered only as a geographic-political territory between two other natural-historical entities (Poland [-Lithuania] and Russia). All (quasi)historiographical mentioning of this land and the people as Ukraine/Ukrainians referring to the period before the mid-17^th century are quite scientifically incorrect, but in the majority of cases politically inspired and colored to present them as something crucially different from the historical process of ethnic genesis of the Russians [for instance: Alfredas Bumblauskas, Genutė Kirkienė, Feliksas Šabuldo (sudarytojai), Ukraina: Lietuvos epocha, 1320−1569, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2010].

The role of the Vatican and the Union Act

It was the Roman Catholic Vatican that was behind the process of creation of the “imagined community” of the “Ukrainian” national identity for the very political purpose of separating the people from this borderland territory from the Orthodox Russian Empire. Absolutely the same was done by Vatican’s client Austria-Hungary in regard to the national identity of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian population when this province was administered by Vienna-Budapest from 1878 to 1918 as it was the Austro-Hungarian government created totally artificial and very new ethnolinguistic identity – the “Bosnians”, just not to be the (Orthodox) Serbs (who were at that time a strong majority of the provincial population) [Лазо М. Костић, Наука утврђује народност Б-Х муслимана, Србиње−Нови Сад: Добрица књига, 2000].

The creation of an ethnolinguistically artificial Ukrainian national identity and later on a separate nationality was part of a wider confessional-political project by the Vatican in the Roman Catholic historical struggle against Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the eastern “schism”) and its churches within the framework of the Pope’s traditional proselytizing policy of reconversion of the “infidels”. One of the most successful instruments of a soft-way reconversion used by the Vatican was to compel a part of the Orthodox population to sign with the Roman Catholic Church the Union Act recognizing in such a way a supreme power by the Pope and dogmatic filioque (“and from the Son” – the Holy Spirit proceeds and from the Father and the Son).

Therefore, the ex-Orthodox believers who now became the Uniate Brothers or the Greek Orthodox believers became, in great numbers, later pure Roman Catholics and also changed their original (from the Orthodox time) ethnolinguistic identity. It is, for instance, very clear in the case of the Orthodox Serbs in the Zhumberak area of Croatia, from the ethnic (Orthodox) Serbs to the Greek Orthodox believers, later the Roman Catholic believers, and finally today the ethnic (Roman Catholic) Croats. Something similar occurred in the case of Ukraine.

The 1596 Brest Union

On October 9^th, 1596 it was announced by the Vatican a Brest Union with a part of the Orthodox population within the borders of the Roman Catholic Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth (today Ukraine) [Arūnas Gumuliauskas, Lietuvos istorija: Įvykiai ir datos, Šiauliai: Šiaures Lietuva, 2009, 44; Didysis istorijos atlasas mokyklai: Nuo pasaulio ir Lietuvos priešistorės iki naujausiųjų laikų, Vilnius: Leidykla Briedis, (without year of publishing) 108]. The crucial issue, nevertheless, in this matter is that today Ukraine’s Uniates and the Roman Catholics are most anti-Russian and of the Ukrainian national feelings. Basically, both the Ukrainian and the Belarus present-day ethnolinguistic and national identities are historically founded on the anti-Orthodox policy of the Vatican within the territory of the ex-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was in essence an anti-Russian political construction.

The Lithuanian historiography writing on the Church Union of Brest in 1596 clearly confirms that:

“… the Catholic Church more and more strongly penetrated the zone of the Orthodox Church, giving a new impetus to the idea, which had been cherished since the time of Jogaila and Vytautas and formulated in the principles of the Union of Florence in 1439, but never put into effect – the subordination of the GDL Orthodox Church to the Pope’s rule” [Zigmantas Kiaupa et al, The History of Lithuania Before 1795, Vilnius: Lithuanian Institute of History, 2000, 288].

In other words, the rulers of the Roman Catholic Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the GDL) from the very time of Lithuania’s baptism in 1387−1413 by the Vatican had a plan to Catholicize all Orthodox believers of the GDL, among whom the overwhelming majority were the Slavs. As a consequence, the relations with Moscow became very hostile as Russia accepted the role of the protector of the Orthodox believers and faith, and, therefore, the 1596 Church Union of Brest was seen as a criminal act by Rome and its client, the Republic of Two Nations (Poland-Lithuania).

A buffer zone

Today, it is absolutely clear that the most pro-Western and Russofrenic part of Ukraine is exactly Western Ukraine – the lands that were historically under the rule of the Roman Catholic ex-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the former Habsburg Monarchy. It is obvious, for instance, from the presidential voting results in 2010 that the pro-Western regions voted for J. Tymoshenko while the pro-Russian regions voted for V. Yanukovych. It is a reflection of the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity dilemma between “Europe” and “Eurasia” – a dilemma that is common for all East-Central and Eastern European nations, who historically played the role of a buffer zone between the German Mittel Europa project and the Russian project of a pan-Slavonic unity and reciprocity.

In general, the western territories of present-day Ukraine are mainly populated by the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Uniates. This part of Ukraine is mostly nationalistic and pro-Western (in fact, pro-German) oriented. Contrary, Eastern Ukraine is, in essence, Russophone and subsequently “tends to look to closer relations with Russia” [John S. Dryzek, Leslie Templeman Holmes, Post-Communist Democratization: Political Discourses Across Thirteen Countries, Cambridge−New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 114].

Since WWI up to today, the Germans have been the principal sponsors of the creation of the national state of Ukrainians for different geopolitical as well as economic reasons. Subsequently, different kinds of Ukrainian nationalists were siding with the German authorities. For instance, whereas the victorious Entente powers after 1918, supported by Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, or Czechoslovakia, were executing the policy of preservation of the Versailles System, the Germans during the interwar period were opposing it and fighting against it. It is from this viewpoint that explains why the Ukrainian nationalists accepted the Nazi policy of a “New European Order” in which a Greater Ukraine could exist in some political form, in fact, as a buffer zone [Frank Golczewski, “The Nazi ‘New European Order’ and the Reactions of Ukrainians”, Henry Huttenbach and Francesco Privitera (eds.), Self-Determination: From Versailles to Dayton. Its Historical Legacy, Longo Editore Ravenna, 1999, 82‒83]. Finally, even today, the main Ukrainian supporter and sponsor in its conflict with Russia is exactly Germany. Nevetheless, we have to keep in mind that after 1991, Russia left at least 25 million ethnic Russian outside the borders of the Russian Federation, a huge number of them in the post-Soviet Ukraine [see more in, Ruth Petrie (ed.), The Fall of Communism and the Rise of Nationalism, The Index Reader, London‒Washington: Cassell, 1997].

Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity, which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution. 

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

Ex-University Professor

Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies

Belgrade, Serbia

http://www.geostrategy.rs

[email protected]

© Vladislav B. Sotirović 2025