At the Fence of Metternich's Garden

In practical terms, ‘Fortress Europe’ means just a new iron curtain that protects the in-group against the out-group, the European haves against the non-European have-nots. Or, as a Romanian scholar ironically remarks, it is a “new wall that separates Europe from the ‘desert of the Tatars’ to its east”, since “the primordial and immediate interest of EU Europe as regards wider Europe is clear: Guard the borders east and south to prevent immigration and other unwanted flows from and through these marginal countries” [Mungiu-Pippidi 2004: 53].

Such an approach, however, is highly dubious in moral terms since it subverts the very principles the western liberal democratic world is built upon. This world, of course, is very inventive in finding convincing excuses and sophisticated ways to bypass some principles or to accommodate them to the daunting reality. But even in purely practical terms, besides the questionable commitments to elevated words and exalted ideals, the minimalist strategy aimed at containment of ‘odd neighbors’ may require ultimately even more resources than its maximalist alternative aimed at their engagement. In the modern world, where versatile security threats became globalized, firm borders tend to bring less and less help:

“Hard borders are not even very useful for combating cross-border crime. Most experts agree that improving police and security cooperation between countries is a more efficient alternative than hiring lots of border guards or buying expensive surveillance technology” [Zielonka 2004: 29]. “Extensive research shows that numbers of migrants will be limited, and that organized crime is much better fought through targeted, intelligence-led policing in the cities, not border controls and visas alone. Criminals usually have access to passports and forged documents, so new border controls will have a much bigger effect on Ukrainian traders and Belarusian peasants than on organized crime. But politics is often irrational—opportunistic politicians (like Jörg Haider) exploit potent fears of uncontrolled migration, even if these fears are unfounded” [Grabbe 2001: 42].

In sum, we should probably recognize that Europe would never become a genuinely cultural project, as Denis de Rougemont and other Kulturliterati envisaged. There is too much of Realpolitik around, too much of ‘might makes right’ and ‘charity begins at home’. There are too powerful forces and too strong temptations to make project Europe genuinely political and economic. And this is why we should still produce our low-circulation books and esoteric journals, and carry out our discussions on European culture, identity, and solidarity. We cannot complete our idealistic project but we can probably rescue it from ultimate degradation.

For Ukrainians and other East European nations who have been cynically (‘pragmatically’) excluded from Europe as a political project, culture remains the only field where they can cherish their imaginary Europeanness, and look for symbolic resources that might enhance their resistance to the dark neo-Soviet/neo-imperial forces that loom large in the East. Again and again, they should refer to Norman Davies’ encouraging dictum: “The right to be referred to as to ‘Europe’ (…) cannot be granted to just one part of the continent. Eastern Europe has never ceased to be European only because it was poor, underdeveloped, or ruled by tyrants. On the contrary, due to the fact that it was deprived of so many things, it became more European, more attached to the values that may be taken for granted by more prosperous citizens of the West” (Tygodnik Powszechny 18, 1992).

The impressive Orange Revolution in Ukraine, otherwise unexplainable, came fully in line with these perspicacious words, as well as with Adam Zagajewski’s earlier deliberations—relevant, as it appeared, not only in Central but also in Eastern Europe: “Soviet Russia has created some very strange things in our part of Europe. It has created informants, liars, censors, and bums who don’t feel like working. But at the same time, without wanting to, it has produced wonderful things in people who by the grace of God are stronger, and somehow more noble. It has aroused in them a wild hunger for truth, freedom, dignity, books, paintings … for Europe. And this is exactly how Europe exists in Central Europe—as a Europe of the imagination, of delusion, of hope, of hunger … The enormous cultural longing felt so strongly in our part of Europe is one of the paradoxical consequences of ‘Sovietization’” [1987: 21].

However critical we might be of fortress Europe and however unhappy we might feel with Wallerstein’s world-economy, we should clearly understand that no one can change these odd systems from the outside, if at all. No outsiders’ complaints would be heard inside or, if heard, taken seriously. All these complaints apriori are compromised as laments of lazy-bones, failures, or crazy leftists. Sometimes, or perhaps often, it’s true. But the West/Rest problem exists, and any attempt to cushion it or, at least, to facilitate cushioning—as our modest intellectual activities do—should be continued despite all setbacks.

2005

1 Cf. the conclusion made by the same reputable Polish sociologist: “Research reveals that there are no reasons to fear any new wave of the labour migration from Ukraine. It seems that everybody who wanted to move, has moved. In the meantime, the great majority of the citizens is absolutely not interested in any issues related to search for a job abroad. The group of travellers is rather narrow, albeit very active” (Ibid., p. 10).

(3) Ambiguous Borderland

In a recent [2005] interview for a leading Polish newspaper, a former French president and, at present, the head of the European constitutional convention, Valery Giscard d’Estaing had to answer a boring question that only importunate Poles could raise in a serious European conversation. The question was, yes, about Ukraine, specifically—about its eventual EU membership prospects.

Well, the president mused,

I feel that insistence on its membership is definitely premature. The problem requires deeper analysis. The borders of contemporary Ukraine were drawn by the Soviets in only around 1957. This causes controversies between Moscow and Kyiv. The Crimea, for instance, never historically belonged to Ukraine. A part of Ukraine has, indeed, a European character—these are the lands that had belonged to Poland and, earlier, to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But the territories behind the Dnieper river and those to the south have a Russian character. Those lands cannot belong to the European Union as long as Russia is not admitted to the EU. Therefore, we should wait and see how things develop (Rzeczpospolita, 26–27 November 2005).

The answer is graphic and, in a way, paradigmatic. It was made not by somebody from the street, like a tabloid reader or writer, but by a prominent politician who, for decades, has influenced and still influences European politics. A deplorable mixture of ignorance, biases and malevolence says a lot on how Ukraine still is perceived in the West and what kind of ‘new neighborhood’ politics could be expected at Brussels in the nearest future.

Ignorance is the least reprehensible in Giscard d’Estaing’s statement. Ukraine’s borders were finally drawn in 1954, not 1957. The territories behind the Dnieper river, the so-called Left-Bank Ukraine, are no more Russian in character than the Right Bank, whatever this ‘Russian character’ might mean. Both of them belonged historically to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which stretched as far as the contemporary borders of the Russian Federation and Kharkiv region. And the patterns of political behavior in both these regions are not much different, as anybody can discern looking at the respective results of elections and/or opinion polls.

The most striking thing in Giscard d’Estaing’s statement is the whimsical logic that a reputable politician employs or, rather, manipulates. At the very beginning, he makes a slight but significant shift in discourse, answering actually not the question that was put. The journalist’s question was about Ukraine’s membership prospects, which were basically guaranteed by Article 49 of the EU Treaty: any European state that firmly meets the Copenhagen criteria can apply for membership. Neither Giscard d’Estaing nor any other responsible politician can deny these prospects as long as the EU Treaty is in force. He pretended, however, that the question was not about remote prospects (in principle, undeniable) but about immediate membership (ridiculous, of course, since Ukraine is indeed far away from the required criteria—but probably not further than Albania, or Bosnia & Herzegovina, let alone Kosovo). No doubt, “insistence on Ukraine’s membership is definitely premature”, as Mr. d’Estaing put it. The only problem, however, is that neither Ukrainian politicians nor the Polish journalist have ever “insisted” on Ukraine’s immediate membership or questioned its “prematurity”. They only wanted Mr. d’Estaing (and other EU officials) to confirm Article 49 and perhaps to speculate a bit on Ukraine’s long (but undeniable) way towards the required criteria.

Instead, he falsified the agenda of the discussion and represented the other side (Ukrainian and Polish) as irresponsible troublemakers, adventurers or, at best, nuisances who allegedly “insist” on something untenable at the moment and ridiculous.

Another discursive trick is made in a seemingly objective statement about “controversies” between Moscow and Kyiv, caused allegedly by the unsettled status of the Crimea. In actuality, yet, there are no controversies of the sort—in legal terms—since the status of the Crimea has been long ago settled both bilaterally (by Russian–Ukrainian agreements of 1990 and 1997) and internationally (both Russia and Ukraine, as OSCE members, recognized the inviolability of the existing borders in Europe, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum obliged the signatories, including Russia, not to challenge or question Ukraine’s sovereignty in any way). What Mr. d’Estaing probably means by “controversies” is the persistent political, economic, and military pressure from the Russian side, irresponsible statements by nationalistic Russian MPs, military men, and other hawks, and all sorts of provocations staged by Russian and pro-Russian extremists in the Crimea.

The same kind of “controversy” between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia resulted, one may remember, in annexation of the Sudetenland and eventually of the whole Czech part of the country. The Kremlin hard-liners would certainly appreciate Giscard d’Estaing’s ‘impartiality’ as an implicit encouragement for further aggressive (or just “controversial”, as he put it) politics vis-à-vis Kyiv. His argument that the Crimea “had never historically belonged to Ukraine” may sound even more encouraging for the revanchists. But what might the implications of this sort of argumentation be? In Alsace? In Silesia? In Kosovo? In Kaliningrad? There are even more territories that “had never historically belonged to Russia”. And, by the way, the Crimea is one of them—as the native land of the Crimean Tatars, whose ancient state, the Crimean Khanate, was conquered and colonized by the Russian empire only at the end of the 18th century. One can barely find a single Crimean Tatar today who would opt for Moscow rule instead of Kyiv’s.

But what on earth have all these arguments to do with Ukraine’s EU membership prospects? The answer dwells probably at the end of Giscard d’Estaing’s argumentation. There, he speaks about a “Russian character” of the Ukrainian south-east—a vague notion that might mean either political or cultural and linguistic affinity with Russia. Whatever it means—a primordial hostility to the West, higher loyalty to Moscow than Kyiv, or just some regional peculiarities like a “French character” of the Belgian south, Swiss west or Canadian east,—Giscard d’Estaing’s verdict on Ukraine is much harder than on Belgium or Switzerland: “Those lands [i.e., Ukraine’s south east] cannot belong to the European Union as long as Russia is not admitted to the EU”.

In other words, they can never belong to the EU because Russia has never had any intentions to get there and would barely have them in the foreseeable future. Ukraine, with all its European aspirations and attempts to democratize the country, is simply downgraded to the level of essentially anti-Western, anti-European, authoritarian Russia. In fact, it is treated not as a sovereign state but, rather, as Russia’s client, a satellite or, perhaps, a kind of ‘Taiwan’ visa-a-vis ‘Greater China’.

And this is the essence of all the rhetorical zigs and zags demonstrated by the French politician. He, like many of his colleagues in France and elsewhere, has never believed that Ukraine does exist as a separate nation and that Ukrainians, even those who speak Russian, may have nonetheless a different identity, different aspirations, and different, not necessarily pro-Moscow, loyalty. Even though the Orange Revolution has shaken these stereotypical views, they persist in the West, having a long diplomatic, political, cultural, and academic tradition, deeply rooted in consciousness and collective sub-consciousness, in dominant discourses and multiple institutions.

Traumatic experience

Historically, Ukrainians have many reasons to be very sensitive about how they are treated and perceived by the West. Independent Ukraine proved to be the “unwanted step-child” not only of Soviet perestroika (as Martin Sieff put it) but also of the 1917 Russian revolution. Every Ukrainian student knows today from his/her historical textbook that the US established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1933, exactly when Moscow was starving to death at least five million Ukrainian peasants. And from the same textbook, they know how in the same year the British Foreign Office strove to silence any information about the man-made famine in Ukraine so as not to irritate the valuable trade partners in Moscow [Subtelny 2009: 416].

Against such a background, many Ukrainians cannot but suspect that the West still has not come to terms with Ukraine’s existence, and still tends to treat it as a legitimate zone of vaguely defined but widely applied Russian ‘interests’: “Most European governments would very happily leave Ukraine in Russia’s orbit, rather than worry about the problems of a large, backward and fissiparous country” [Barysch & Grant 2004].

Such a perception has been skillfully exploited by the post-Soviet elite to invigorate old anti-Western stereotypes in Ukrainian society, to justify the lack of a coherent, comprehensive and responsible foreign policy driven by national rather than clannish or personal interests, and to divert public attention from the real and fundamental reasons that made crypto-Soviet Ukraine incompatible with and non-admittible to the EU. The rhetorical strategy under Kuchma [1994–2004] was designed to persuade the people that we are excluded not because we are unreformed and our leaders are crooks and liars but just because we are different, we are Ukrainians, Eastern Slavs, the ‘worse’ brand of human beings.

Unfortunately, Europeans did little if anything to disperse these impressions. On the contrary, in many cases, they fueled fears and biases deeply rooted in Ukrainians’ inferiority complexes.

Perhaps the best example of blind and, alas, firmly institutionalized West European Russocentrism comes from a classified report drawn up by the German and French foreign ministries in 2000: “The admission of Ukraine would imply the isolation of Russia. It is sufficient to content oneself with close cooperation with Kiev. The Union should not be enlarged to the East any further …”1

To some West European EU members [an American expert comments on this whimsical logic] Ukraine is still seen as ‘semi-Russian’, a factor that reinforces the tendency to place the fate of all three eastern Slavs together … Linking the destinies of Ukraine and Russia places them both beyond ‘Europe’ … This suits Russia, which is seeking to develop a ‘strategic partnership’ with the EU but not membership. It does not suit Ukraine that seeks membership” [Kuzio 2003: 6, 14].

There are, of course, many reasons to prioritize relations with Russia as the biggest country on the continent, with rich natural resources, primarily gas and oil, the largest nuclear arsenal, and a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. But the reasons why Russia is overtly favored at the expense of its neighbors are less clear. Partly it can be explained by an imperial likeness between the large European nations and Russia, embedded historically in modes of thought and behavior, in national psyche and ‘habits of the heart’. A more credible explanation, however, is a heavy dependence of Western thought and Western ideas about Russia on Russian imperial myths elaborated, by and large, in the 18th century and firmly established as the ‘scholarly truth’ and ‘common knowledge’. Ukraine unfortunately has been a central part of this historical and cultural mythmaking, its major target and victim.

In brief, the myth consists of three major narratives. The first one blurs and washes away any difference between two very different historical entities—Ruś and Russia. The linguistic similarity is successfully converted into a historical, geographical and political similarity and, eventually, sameness. By the same token, modern Romania can be identified with ancient Rome, and Britain identified with Brittany. The second narrative grants the modern name Russia, coined in the early 18th century, to medieval Muscovy and establishes mythical ties between the Moscow Tsardom and Kyivan Ruś. The fact is, however, that no idea of Moscow’s succession to the Kyiv Ruś legacy could be found in Muscovite thought until the end of the 17th century, when Left Bank Ukraine and the city of Kyiv were taken from Poland and when the Grand imperial myth began to be formed (ironically, by Ukrainian clerics hired by Peter the Great and seeking to enhance their country’s symbolic role as the cradle of the empire). And finally, the third narrative questions the very existence of the Ukrainian (and Belarusian) nations, misrepresenting them as incidental offshoots of the great Russian nation—despite the fact that these ‘offshoots’ came under full Russian control for the first time in their history only at the end of the 18th century, after the partition of Poland.

Any nation is largely built on ‘invented traditions’, and Russia is no exception to the rule. But very few nations center their identities almost thoroughly on historical myths, and very few national myths are so expansive, so militant and, alas, so broadly accepted as ‘historical truths’.

A ‘Russia first’ policy, based on these myths as well as on cynical Realpolitik, seems to be the main if not the only rationale for Western ambiguity about Ukraine and for Western reluctance to treat it as equal to any other nation on the continent, with the same rights, same chances and prospects for EU membership as Albania, Turkey or, say, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It does not mean that unreformed, stagnant, oligarchic Ukraine could and should be admitted to the EU. It means only that such a Ukraine should be rejected for that very reason articulated openly, and not because Russia might feel ‘isolated’ and perhaps ‘unhappy’, as some Western leaders equivocally suggest. “Tough love” (in Heather Grabbe’s words)—this is exactly what Ukraine needs: more ‘love’ for the nation, with clear incentives of future membership, and more ‘toughness’ for the political leaders, who should come in line with their domestic and international obligations.

So far, EU policy towards Ukraine has been nearly as ambiguous and equivocal as that of Ukraine towards the EU, although the reasons for this are different. From such a policy, probably no one can figure out whether Ukraine is barred from prospective membership simply because of its poor political and economic performance, or rather because of the nation’s assumed intrinsic inferiority and congenital Russian vassalage.

Some statements made by EU officials rather deepen the confusion than dispel it. Suffice it to mention Romano Prodi’s notorious remark that Ukraine “has as much reason to be in the EU as New Zealand” (because New Zealanders, in his words, also have a European identity). Or the no less controversial quip by Günter Verheugen that “anybody who thinks Ukraine should be taken into the EU should perhaps come along with the argument that Mexico should be taken into the U.S.”2

It does not matter that neither do New Zealanders strive to join the EU, nor Mexicans for U.S. accession. And that none of them stage an ‘orange revolution’ to assert their Europeanness. In both exemplified cases, grotesque and essentially absurd arguments were set forth by respectable politicians in such a way as to stultify their potential opponents, to mock and discredit their arguments in advance, and to thereby make any further discussion impossible. In other words, the goal was not to clarify anything whatsoever but just to convert political power into discursive or, as Michel Foucault would have put it, to monopolize the discourse of ‘normality’ and push all opponents beyond that discourse, into the realm of insanity and obsession.

The double standards will probably be ingrained in EU policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, and the duplicity will not disappear, as long as the EU does not decouple Ukraine and Russia and refuses to recognize their absolutely different strategic agendas. The EU still has to decide whether “it can agree in principle to Ukraine being inside the EU while Russia remains outside” [Kuzio 2003: 30]. This cannot come easily, and Ukrainians must recognize that ‘enlargement fatigue’ is a reality in Europe. And that the timing is really bad for their country after the decision to start membership talks with Turkey and the accession of 10 new countries in 2004. For too many Europeans, as Martin Wolf put it, Ukraine and Turkey, by virtue of their size and location, are “twin nightmares” haunting the EU (Financial Times, 1 February 2005). Too many of them perceive these countries as not just too poor, too big, and too different, but as thoroughly alien, even hostile. Xenophobia is primarily a biological, not a sociological phenomenon. It comes from a basic instinct that can be controlled or not, can be tamed by culture and education, or released and exploited by populist ideologies and political forces.

Ukrainians may be surprised, even exasperated by the fact that the European Neighborhood Policy elaborated by the EU places them in one bag with North African and Middle Eastern countries, but this decision reflects the profound mode of Western thought: all these countries, including Ukraine, are perceived as not really ‘European’, and the name ‘European Neighborhood Policy’ (instead of ‘EU Neighborhood Policy’) is not just a minor political incorrectness but an essential view, a part of the Weltanschauung. In a sense, the Europeans are right: all the profound differences between East Slavonic and Middle Eastern or North African countries notwithstanding, all of them “are involved in a more or less open civil war which seems to be fed by a disagreement on the adoption of Western values” [Langer 2004]. What is common between Morocco and Belarus, Lebanon and Ukraine is that in all of them “the EU is challenged by another spiritual power”—Muslim orthodoxy in one case, Russian ‘Eurasian’/neo-Soviet imperialism in the other.

For many Ukrainians, this is a difficult truth to accept. From their point of view, the ENP rather excludes them from Europe proper than facilitates their inclusion. This not only contradicts Ukraine’s stated strategic goal of full EU membership, but also poses a challenge to Ukraine’s identity, which historically evolved under permanent threat of Russification and therefore made the nation’s alleged ‘Europeanness’ a sort of life belt, a means to legitimize and secure its cultural and political emancipation. The Europeans, who tend to ignore this sensitive issue, simply do not understand its symbolic importance. For many Ukrainians, the denial of Ukraine’s European prospects means a denial, or undermining, of their identity, an implicit attempt to throw them back into the Russian ‘Eurasian’ bag and, worse, to cynically settle relations with Russia at Ukraine’s expense.

From the very beginning, ‘return to Europe’ has been seen by Ukrainian nation-builders as a return to the norm, a fixing of historical injustice and perversion, a healing of a developmental pathology. Such a romantic approach emerged naturally from modern Ukrainian nationalism which, from its very inception in the first half of the 19th century, had to emphasize Ukraine’s ‘otherness’ vis-a-vis Russia [Riabchuk 1996]. This meant, in particular, that Ukrainian activists not just praised the alleged Ukrainian ‘Europeanness’ as opposed to the demonized Russian ‘Asiaticness’; they had volens-nolens to accept the whole set of Western liberal-democratic values as presumably ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ for Ukrainians (yet allegedly ‘unnatural’ for Russians).

In a recent examination of the correlation between a strong Ukrainian national identity, and adherence to democracy, market reforms, and westernization, Stephen Shulman concluded that the crucial factor was Ukrainians’ self-image. That is, Ukrainian nationalism claims that Ukrainians historically and culturally were particularly individualistic and freedom-loving.

Elite proponents of this identity typically contrast ethnic Ukrainians and Ukraine historically and culturally with Russians in Russia, a people and a country that are perceived to have strong collectivistic and authoritarian roots. At the same time, elite proponents of this identity argue that Ukrainians have much in common culturally and historically with Europe (…) [Therefore] democracy and capitalism symbolically raise the status of ethnic Ukrainians, spread the values alleged to be associated with ethnic Ukrainian culture throughout the country, and are more likely to function effectively in a country based on perceived ethnic Ukrainian values. Further, since the main ‘Other’ of this identity, Russia, is seen as having a history and culture estranged from individualistic and freedom-based development models, rejection of non-democratic and non-capitalistic models symbolically and actually maintains the perceived cultural distance between Ukraine and Russia and thereby reinforces the Ethnic Ukrainian national identity. Finally, precisely because European and ethnic Ukrainian culture are seen as close, and Europeans are associated with democracy and capitalism, these models are likely to be favored because they symbolically and actually reinforce the cultural similarity between these two peoples and elevate the status of ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine as a core group [Shulman, 2005: 67].

The problem with this analysis, however, is that this type of identity has never dominated Ukraine—at least until recently. In a sense, it was a “minority faith,” as Andrew Wilson [1997] defined it, because it was repressed for decades by the Russian-tsarist and then Russian-Soviet state, which promoted imperial Russian/Soviet/East Slavonic identity.

Even though the correlation between language, identity and social/political attitudes disclosed by Shulman is not direct, it is statistically significant and useful for political prognosis as well as (alas) manipulation. Apparently, the highest level of national self-awareness and the strongest commitment to European integration and Western liberal-democratic values is to be found in the least Russified, western part of the country, while the lowest level of national consciousness and strongest Sovietophile, anti-Western attitudes can be found in the most Russified/Sovietized south-eastern regions.3 This creates a very strong temptation to conceptualize Ukraine simplistically in Manichean terms as a place with a ‘nationalist’ West and a ‘Sovietophile’ East.