Epilogue to the End of the USSR

The events unfolding in Ukraine are the final act in the disintegration of the Soviet Union which began peacefully, Czech-style, in 1991 and is unfortunately about to end in bloodshed, Yugoslavian-style, now. This time, however, the part played by Milosevic in Belgrade is being emulated by Zelensky in Kiev with the West backing the wrong side in this conflict.

Astute and knowledgeable observers of European affairs may have noticed for a few decades now that European Slavs do not always know how to live peacefully together in the same country.

During the nineties we witnessed the implosion of two Slav states, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The differences between Czechs and Slovaks or between Croatians and Serbs were in fact minor and were related to different dialects, in some cases to religion or belonging to different political blocks before unification. To give but one example, while Serbs were until the end of the 19th century part of the Ottoman empire, the Croatians lived in the Austro-Hungarian empire. (In 2006, even Serbia and Montenegro dissolved their union dating back to the 19th century)

The disintegration of Yugoslavia took a full 8 years to complete, between 1991-1999, and was marked by wars between the Serbs and the Croats, the Serbs and the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Kossovars. The wars ended only after NATO took the decision to bomb Serbia and destroy critical infrastructure in 1999.

For most European nations of mixed ethnic backgrounds, like Belgium or Switzerland, such differences did not prevent them from building well-managed states, which outlasted cataclysmic events like the two world wars, and are still around today. Belgium, for example, separated in 1830 from the more powerful Dutch state and was subject to military aggression. The military aggression against Belgium was stopped in its tracks by the London Conference of the Great Powers, when its independence and neutrality were affirmed and recognised.

To the East of the continent, Romania provides another example of a country made up of territories of the former Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, but which displays remarkable national unity and a high degree of tolerance towards the Hungarian minority on its territory. 

In the beginning, the 1991  dissolution of the USSR happened peacefully . The Soviet empire stands as a shining example of a multinational state that folded without igniting a war or provoking ethnic violence. This situation lasted until 2014, when American neoconservatives decided to play nation-builders in Ukraine. 

The 2014 change in government in Kiev and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea marked the beginning of an armed struggle between the Russophones living in the Donbas and the Ukrainian army. After another 8 years of skirmishes which made 14,000 victims, as documented by the OSCE, Russia has decided to intervene militarily a few days ago and to start the aerial bombing of the main Kiev military installations. Unlike the mighty NATO intervention in Serbia in 1999 - which shied away from putting boots on the ground - the Russian army entered Ukraine in force. Also, whilst NATO's actions in Serbia were questionable from an international law point of view, Russia is trying to put order in its own neighbourhood.

The events unfolding over the past few days in Ukraine and Russia's military intervention  are, unfortunately, badly distorted by Western media and diplomats. The most disgusting aspect of the current events is the Western leadership's hypocritical reaction to them. Thus, while the West deplored the fate of a few hundred Kosovar victims and was quick enough to bomb the Milosevic regime out of existence, the thousands of victims and millions of refugees from the Donbas have not registered at all on its radars. In fact, the condemnation of the Russian intervention has a lot to do with the West's irrational and unjustifiable dislike of Russia as a state and of Putin as its leader.

What we are in fact witnessing now is the epilogue of the USSR's 1991 disintegration, which left Russian-speaking populations in countries like Georgia or Ukraine at the mercy of unscrupulous political leaders, like Shakashvili or Zelensky, and their external backers, especially in the US. Both these leaders have done their utmost to drag the entire Western alliance into a much bigger military conflict with Russia, in an eerily similar manner in which the Serbs had done in 1914. If ultimately successful, such efforts would have surely degenerated into a nuclear war.

Treating the current events in Ukraine as similar to the final disintegration of Yugoslavia, however, can go a long way towards preventing Western officials from making fools of themselves out of sheer lack of understanding of the political culture of Slavic nations and of their propensity to use violence against other Slavs who happen not to share their religion or language, as Kiev's treatment of the Russophones in the Donbas has shown.