If you recommend an author on the topic of Ukraine to someone, the name of the historian Serhiy Plokhi comes to mind first. And any serious discussion about Ukraine, even here in Romania, cannot but be based on a preliminary reading of his books. In the following short interview, due to the appearance in Romanian of his great work “The Russian-Ukrainian War. The return of history”, – the Harvard professor emphasizes the difference between Ukraine and Russia, a country where democracy has made its way, where civil society is of little and great importance and which strives for freedom, and another country where authoritarianism has already turned into a dictatorship. .

Serhii Plokhiy is a professor of the history of Ukraine at Harvard University, where he heads the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Department, and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute of the same university.

Did more details become known today regarding the Kremlin’s decision to launch a “special operation”? Did Putin really think it would only last three days? Is Putin fully responsible for the decision to invade Ukraine?

So far, there is little information coming from inside Moscow about the decision to go to war. But what we already know is that the decision was made by Putin, and he bears full responsibility for this unjustified aggression. The number and type of troops he brought into the operation leaves no doubt that he and his advisers were planning a military-police operation similar to those used by imperial rulers in the colonies, rather than the largest war in Europe since the end of World War II. world war

Why do you say that Russia was much more concerned about the possibility of Ukraine joining the European Union than NATO?

They tried to prevent Ukraine from leaving their sphere of influence, and joining the EU was as much a step in that direction as joining NATO. In fact, the war began in 2014 due to Ukraine signing the association agreement with the EU. In the case of association with the EU, Ukraine will not be able to join the Eurasian Union, which is promoted by Moscow. So war on the part of Russia means holding the nation captive, or, in other words, maintaining control over the post-imperial space.

What type of empire does Russia belong to? Will it eventually fall apart?

All empires fall, and Russia is no exception. Land empires, of which Russia is a part and in many respects continues to be, are disintegrating in the same way as sea empires. The examples of the Mongols, Ottomans and Habsburgs leave no doubt in this regard. The war in Ukraine accelerated the process of disintegration of the Russian imperial space. Poland, the Baltic states and Finland – all parts of the former empire – today are in the EU and NATO, Ukraine is on the path to European integration, and Kazakhstan accepts China’s security guarantees. The signs are obvious.

In an interview with Contributors.ro, historian Michael Ignatiev said that Russians today support Putin because they cannot imagine Russia as anything other than an empire. And it will take them a long time to shake off this idea of ​​their place in the world. How would you describe Russian nationalism?

I agree with this assessment. Russians lived in an empire, and the imperial identity is a force that Putin represents and imposes. If earlier Russian imperialism was masked by communist ideology, now it stems from a certain type of Russian nationalism. For the first time in many centuries, Russians live in a state where they are the majority. The restrictions that once existed, stemming from concerns that if Russian nationalism went too far, non-Russians might rise up, are gone today. Nationalism became the most important ideological trend. This is a type of imperial nationalism that interprets Ukraine and Belarus as parts of the Russian nation. He is inspired by xenophobia in the West and racism in the East, especially towards citizens of Central Asian states. The irony is that today the descendants of the world’s largest empire are using their anti-Western sentiment to lead the anti-imperial struggle of the global South.

“Ukraine is not Russia” is the name of ex-president Leonid Kuchima’s memoir. In this book, he describes the failures of adopting the Russian model in Ukraine. He himself tried to apply this model and failed. Why did the Russian model not work in Ukraine?

If it is difficult for Russians to imagine themselves outside the state, Ukrainians have lived for a long time not only without their own state, but also in conflict with states imposed on them by others. This history of resistance to the state, as well as Ukrainian regionalism, also rooted in history, contributes to the strengthening of Ukrainian civil society, a phenomenon that is practically absent in Russia.

Was Ukraine a much more democratic country than Russia in the 2000s?

Yes, it was and continues to be today. While Russians allowed the state to destroy elements of their civil society in the 1990s, ostensibly in the name of democracy, Ukrainians have never allowed their governments to take away their freedom. The Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity are vivid examples of Ukrainian resistance to authoritarian tendencies from above. Since the 1990s, there has been nothing like democratic mobilizations in Ukraine in Russia.

How would you describe the relationship between Ukraine and Romania in the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Ukraine and Romania have a complicated and not always peaceful history, but the political elites and peoples of both countries managed to learn lessons from history and avoid conflict. You can look at what has been happening recently in Ukrainian-Hungarian and Ukrainian-Polish relations to understand how successfully the relations between Ukraine and Romania have been regulated.

How good were Ukraine’s relations with other Eastern European countries before 2014? Did Russia influence the formation of these relations?

Russia has tried in the past and continues to try to exploit tensions between Ukraine and Poland and between Ukraine and Hungary. In 2014, the Russians appealed to the Poles, provocatively inviting Poland to take part in the future partition of Ukraine. This is just one of many examples of the Kremlin’s attempts to inflame old conflicts and create new ones.

Writer Svitlana Aleksievich said a few days ago that Navalny’s death shows that Putin will not stop. Putin is not a politician, he is a KGB officer, she said.

The attempt on Navalny’s life, his subsequent imprisonment and now his death in a penal colony is a clear signal sent from Moscow that anyone who dares to challenge Putin’s personal power, whether a liberal like Boris Nemtsov or an ultranationalist with a criminal record like Yevgeny Prigozhin, or anti-corruptionist like Navalny, sooner or later becomes a target for assassination. The regime long ago passed the authoritarian stage and became a dictatorship. The latter is reminiscent of the death of Navalny.

Should the US now talk about the need for regime change in Russia? And actually, what do you think the United States wants out of this war?

The current Russian regime is a threat to Russia and the world. I have no doubt that this will pass. The question is when and which regime will change it. It is not enough to replace one regime with another, it is necessary to change the Russian imperial mentality, which continues to produce wars. The main concern of the US today is not to change the Russian mentality or even the Russian regime, but to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia.

I saw a happy Putin when he shook hands with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi prince. What did Putin get from the Arab countries?

To win this war, Putin must split the Western-led alliance and turn as many countries as possible against the US. Regardless of the practical outcome of the meeting, the photo opportunity helps Russia in its anti-Western agenda.

How do you now comment on the internal situation in Ukraine? How to understand the latest actions and changes adopted by Zelensky? Why were the elections postponed?

Elections of the President of Ukraine during wartime are expressly prohibited by the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, their organization will now cause more questions than answers and may cause a split in Ukrainian society. Read the rest of the article at Contributors.ro