Ukrainian Agency and Putin’s Perversion of Historical Memory

Natali Sevriukova pictured in front of her house after a rocket attack in Kyiv, Ukraine (Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press)

As a comparative politics scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tufts, Oxana Shevel has dedicated much of her research to issues of national identity, citizenship, and memory politics in the post-Communist region. Growing up in Ukraine and having studied the history of the region for most of her professional career, Professor Shevel finds it difficult to isolate the country in terms of the standard international relations theory of great power politics. While the influence of the US is surely relevant to any discussion of current events in international relations, Professor Shevel’s work highlights that more attention should be given to the pulling apart of identity between Russia and Ukraine in identifying Moscow’s interests in the invasion.

In The Development of National Identities in Ukraine, Professor Shevel writes that Soviet nationality policies attempted to manage groups of people and potential opposition with the justification of protecting “Sovietness” and subsequently the ethnopolitical community of “Soviet people (Shevel 295-297).”  Nationality “became a marker that could create stigma and even pose a direct threat to life (Shevel 296).” Since national identity was strongly associated with state control over Ukraine during the years of the Soviet Union, there is a factor of historic loyalty out of necessity for people living in Ukraine to identity as Soviet people. As a result, the formation of a solid Ukrainian national identity did not occur as quickly as the USSR’s collapse indicated it might. The interconnectedness of the two states had fostered a sizeable portion of the population in Ukraine that desired to hold on to their Russian/Soviet identity. Still, a gradual trend emerged in the pro-Ukrainian direction. (Shevel 300). The collapse of the Soviet Union had allowed Ukrainian citizens to begin conversations on what Ukrainian citizenship and civic identity meant as it distinguished itself from Russia.

Amid this “pulling apart of identity,” Professor Shevel emphasizes that we should take the Russian imperial narrative seriously. While Putin has cited anything from NATO encroachment, denazification, and desatanization as security interests that justify invasion, “Putin by all indications considers himself to be an amateur historian (Shevel).” He frequently cites 20th century imperial historians and recommends these texts to state officials. Therefore, a definitive component of Putin’s foreign policy must include some sort of judgment that “Russia can really only be a great country if it controls Ukraine” and that “Ukrainian sovereignty is like a dagger in the heart of Russia (Shevel).” To achieve the goal of this imperialist rationale without angering the international community, Putin obfuscates his motives wildly.

For example, an unhealthy obsession over Ukrainian nationalism during WWII has emerged as a tool to label any opposition to Russian policies as Nazism. Ukraine’s “checkered legacy” in WWII contributes to this “cult of the Second World War (Shevel).” In the early 1940s, the nationalist political group OUN-B led by Stepan Bandera fought for an independent Ukraine against both Soviets and Nazis, which included a complicated period of misguided collaboration with Germany. For Russia, this presented an opportunity to mischaracterize any support for Ukrainian independence as support of Nazism. The fullest extent of these accusations are targeted at the Azov Battalion, whose nationalist ideology is such an extreme minority that their associated political group does not hold a single seat in the Verkhovna Rada. To be sure, the consequences of real Nazi ideology could not matter less to Russian leadership. Indeed, Professor Shevel clarifies that “the Holocaust itself is not even acknowledged in Soviet historiography because the victims were Soviet citizens. The singling out of Jewish people as victims was not even a part of Soviet discourse.” The wrongdoing of Ukrainian nationalists, therefore, was not the potential aid to genocide, but rather standing up to the Soviet Union; exemplifying the arbitrary and opportunistic means with which Russian leadership takes advantage of historical memory.

But what might this mean for the US and settlements after the war? For one, the US and other Western countries should take note of Putin’s by-any-means-necessary approach to rejecting Ukrainian agency. With the baseline assumption that a powerful Russia must include Ukraine, “Putin himself is confused,” in his efforts to water down Russian imperialism so that it might seem more palatable (Shevel). Since Putin cannot outright declare that he desires a return to a level of Soviet-reminiscent imperial strength., he must throw out arguments about NATO encroachment and denazification, hoping that something sticks and that the West become more understanding. In this context, the West must wholeheartedly reject Putin’s excuses and calls for negotiations that do not prioritize Ukrainian agency. Professor Shevel closes:

We are dealing with a situation in which a nuclear armed dictator wants to take over and eliminate the nationhood and statehood of a neighboring country. How do you negotiate with this? He says, okay, I’m going to take one arm now and I promise not to do more. The Ukrainians are very clear that that is not acceptable.

Politicians and pundits alike should recognize that any resolution in Ukraine must begin with an uncompromising demand that Putin leave. Anything less would disregard Ukrainian agency in favor of Putin’s perversion of historical memory, which only serve Russia’s imperial ambitions in the end.

---

Works Cited

Shevel, Oxana. “The Development of National Identities in Ukraine.” From “the Ukraine” to

Ukraine  A Contemporary History, 1991–2021, edited by Matthew Rojansky,

Georgiy Kasianov and Mykhailo Minakov (2021): n. pag. Print.

Shevel, Oxana. Interview. Conducted by Sam Sullivan. 10/27/22