As the war in Ukraine, now almost two-and-a-half years since its onset, struggles on, clearly Russia continues to follow its time-honored tradition of fulfilling its self-anointed prophecy proclaimed five centuries ago of Moscow being the Third Rome.
Ukraine is a separate country from Russia. Its Slavic language, although similar, is different from Russian, both in spelling and pronunciation. Its economy is different, with the vast plains of Ukraine having been called the “breadbasket” of the former Soviet Union during the days of communist domination. Its forms of religion are also different, whether one speaks of the Orthodox or the Eastern Catholic parts of the country.
From the time of Peter the Great in the 17th and early 18th centuries, through that of Catherine the Great less than a century later, Russia has striven to secure a warm-water port on the Black Sea. Until the current invasion began, the most recent manifestation of that drive was Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, which geopolitically should be part of Ukraine.
As Russia has conquered other nations, it has engaged in a policy of forced Russification, whereby it attempts to make those subjected peoples “Russian.” Large numbers of ethnic Russians have been moved into occupied territories in attempts to bring about Russian populations and to diminish the influence and standing of the native peoples. Ironically, the two most successful “Russifiers” were not Russian themselves, namely, Catherine II, the so-called “Great,” born a German princess, and Josef Stalin, a Georgian peasant by birth.
The forced Russian migrations took place in all of the occupied territories, notably in the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in Belarus, and in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, always with the aim of subjugating the native populations to Russian rule. Whether during the period of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or the current post-Soviet period in which Vladimir Putin, who began his career as an agent of the KGB, the enforcement wing of the Soviet communist party, attempts to regather the lands and peoples once under Russian rule continue unabated.
In America, our understanding of this process was articulated most clearly by the late professor and Ambassador Lev Dobriansky in his two books, The Vulnerable Russians and USA and the Soviet Myth. For four decades he spoke and wrote of the fragility of the Soviet Union, and in 1959, he was the father of the National Captive Nations Act, signed by President Eisenhower, which called for national observances of Soviet Russian domination over the other nations, most notably in sponsoring Captive Nations Week each July.
In his view the U.S.S.R. was vulnerable and could be brought down without armed conflict. During the 1980 presidential campaign, he was one of Ronald Reagan’s strategic advisors, a role he continued after Reagan’s election. In effect, the U.S.A. drove the U.S.S.R. into bankruptcy by outspending it on military buildup and by hammering away at Soviet weakness. Witness Reagan’s speech in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
The euphoria that ensued after the collapse of the Soviet Union sadly proved to be of short duration, as within a decade Putin emerged with his goal of retaking the former satellite nations that had achieved their independence from Moscow with the Soviet state’s dissolution on December 26, 1991.
For the past 65 years July has been designated “Captive Nations Month.” This year, particularly as Ukraine fights for its survival, we can profit from the study of the past, reflecting on the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to relive it,” and on this Independence Day, we can offer renewed thanks for our freedom.
Happy Fourth of July!
