As the Russian-Ukrainian War nears the three-year mark, the question looms as to why Russia sees Ukraine as being of such vital importance to its own national interest. The answer to that question is to be found in our understanding of the term “national interest.”
Previously in the course of this war, I have written of the lasting and driving force of the Russian mindset over the last five centuries, namely the myth that Moscow is the Third Rome, the successor of Rome and Constantinople, and consequently, the political heir of the imperial legacies of the first two Romes.
Initially a pseudo-religious concept, after the Bolshevik seizure of power by V. I. Lenin and his cohort in 1917, the myth assumed its current secular form, but the psychology of the concept has abided down to our own time. The present venture is an attempt on Russia’s part to reassemble the territorial structure of the Soviet Union, which by the time of its fall in1991, by far had surpassed that of its Tsarist predecessor state.
In this effort, Ukraine is the key to the rebuilding of the Russian economy. As Ukraine’s historic role, throughout both the Tsarist and Soviet periods, had been serving as the “breadbasket” of the larger, imperial state, today re-establishing that function is the first step to achieving once again a “Greater Russia.”
Geopolitically, the vast territory of Ukraine once again has the potential of producing the grain necessary to feed the population of the expanded Russian hegemony. The plains of Ukraine are what Russia needs to produce the wheat necessary to feed its people. The fear that Ukraine would join NATO is only a ruse for justifying Putin’s aggression, the more crucial reason being to regather the agricultural production that Ukraine presents.
In offering these thoughts, I am reminded of the 1970s joke that referenced a meeting, albeit hypothetical, of the Soviet Politburo, the governing body of the state, in which President Leonid Brezhnev told the members that he had endured a terrible nightmare the previous night. When asked what it was, he said he had dreamt that the whole world had become communist. His colleagues retorted that such was a beautiful dream, as that was what they were working to achieve. They asked him why he called it a nightmare, to which he replied, “If the whole world goes Communist, where will we buy our wheat.”
At the same time the joke was circulating, the late professor Lev Dobriansky published his seminal study, U.S.A and the Soviet Myth, in which he presented the equation, “U.S.S.R. minus Ukraine equals zero.” The book was a sequel to his earlier volume, The Vulnerable Russians, which delineated the weaknesses of the Soviet imperial hegemony.
The economic structure of the Soviet state was based on Stalin’s institution of Planned Economy, which ultimately became the brainchild of Veniamin Dymshits, a now-discredited Soviet-era economist who was its leading proponent. Marxism never works well in any economic system, but its greatest failures have come in the realm of agriculture. In that arena, as far as Russia is concerned, the Ukrainian agricultural potential is the underlying cause propelling the current Russian invasion.
Many years, indeed decades, ago, when I was studying Russian history, in the West we referred to “The Ukraine,” a misstep occasionally repeated in our day. The use of “The” denied the national character of Ukraine, making it appear to be a geographical term, rather than a political one. Understanding the significance of the dropping of the “The” in referencing Ukraine is yet another of Lev Dobrianksky’s contributions.
Lastly, in speaking of the current conflict, I follow the literary convention of listing the loser first in a bi-lateral war, thus the Russian-Ukraine War.
