In this domesticum, we acknowledge Ukraine is her own nation-state, with all that that entails, including increasingly meaningful independence from Moscovian ‘governance’.
Such does not preclude the transnational nature of a linguistic continuum. In this case, the germane one is persons for whom Russian is the mother tongue, although of course there are also a number of Ukrainian speakers in Russia, Ukrainians being one of the top ten ethnic groups in the country, which is also something true about Ukraine.
Severe severance can happen within such continuities, Germany and Korea being prime examples. Cases like Canada and the Other Federally Conjoined Subnational Entities of Mid-North America, or whatever you want to call them, share a transnational metacultural continuity containing a variety of properly Castorian and properly Washingtonian components, and I think it’s fair to say that the Washingtonian components enjoy a generous cardinality of numeration because – let’s be plain here – they are more than ten times our number and are also the Cadillac of world economies.1Or at least, they ought to be. Good stewardship of state is a good thing, and not necessarily to be found in all executory preeminences, or at least not every day – even unto the reality that for some stewards there’s also been the matter of when you have your good days, but for what it’s worth I think Trump is sufficiently hale if not literally seventeen anymore. In addition to not having the Canadian Shield to contend with, they have a much kinder core selection of latitudes, and definitely also a plurality of attitudes, not to parrot what has already been better said by others. But some proper Canadianness does find purchase across the border – some people did have Joni Mitchell 8-tracks in their cars, or at least there was sufficient plausibility that one United Statesian was able to sing about it.
The Internet, too, is a transnational medium, and this can have profound consequences. We have a digital agora that transcends national silos. I think that the Great Nations of Northern North America (maybe those portions of Mexico that conspicuously have their act together could also participate down the road) should establish a freedom of free exchange between the constitutive nation states, constituting each their several provinces and (now a good bit more than just) several states, in both goods and people. We are highly compatible nations, notwithstanding our being properly each our own nations.
Although much of the pop culture is shared, some things are more over in one country than the other. And then there’s the civic consciousness and nationality, which are quite different from those of the Not-Only-New-York Yankees. We are an explicitly Royalist entity here, though like the other Carolinian Realms, we do have Parliaments that control the aggluteration and disemburthening of the public purse. (Although Cape Breton never had one under George III and limped along under an on-again, off-again rum tax.) In lieu of an elected President, we have a King of Canada, but it’s fair to point out that practically speaking he’s rather preoccupied with the affairs of [Scotland, Wales, and England, not to mention any territories not on Prydain Fawr Proper] – that is the proper domain of the Government of “His Majesty’s Government” and there Charles III is the Sovereign, and he’ll express his opinions according to his own independent sense. (True, these days, contemporary administrative function is neither done out of Windsor Castle nor Buckingham Palace, whereas with Westminster and Number Ten it’s at least a matter of debate.) In Canada, the Governor General, meant to be a representative of the Monarch, is in fact instead a political appointee, though of course great care is taken to avoid (“the appearance of”) a patronage appointment. Often genuinely prominent Canadians from outside of the guild of executors of the body politic are appointed, officially by the Monarch, but, reflecting the present political reality of representative government, substantively by the Prime Minister, and formally on the latter’s advice.
Ukraine will always be a proud, Slavic nation[state, when neither the Kremlin nor the Winter Palace nor the Reichstag nor Wawel Castle have the upper hand over Team Taras]. It is not the case that Russians, being also proud Slavs, of the kin of a Capital fellow in Washington, must be in any way diminished by the prospect of an independent Ukraine taking on more of a European-facing than a Kremlin-lassoed character. (The Kremlin is the thing that millions of people in Russia are careful to say they respect. It is not a democratic institution and it does not brook rivals for her powers. Her grip on the Russian psyche stands beyond question at this moment in history, but you could argue Navalny had at least a minor breakthrough, seemingly.) Indeed, given the high numbers of Russophones within Ukraine, this is actually a huge opportunity for Russians to learn that appropriating European ways to Slavic cultures won’t actually make Slavs shrivel up and die. And Europeans tend to take seriously language issues, so having the right to maintain a Russian-medium interpersonal culture within the State of Ukraine is something they would have to be willing to help ensure. Life generally in Russian (meaning for those for whom this is generally their life already) but within the overall national stewardship of the Official Cossack Appreciator’s Democracy Booster Club that runs a Properly Ukrainian Show from Ye Olde Kiev should not be, and can not be an oxymoron, if the project of Ukrainian Statehood is to work peacably with not just ethnolingual Ukrainians but others who find themselves within her Form of State following the Soviet dissolution.
And yet there have been issues in the Eastern European region of the Earth. The Baltic Republics have Russian minorities within them. Treating them fairly was a condition of their accession to the European Union. But Latvia had to ban Russian TV. And I say “had to”, because what can you do when a “neighbouring” capital considers your capital the next landing target for their paratroopers on the next episode of Getting the Tsarosoviet Band Back Together? Russia must not be aided or abetted in this geopolitical objective. The Russian polity must understand that it is the successor to the former R.S.F.S.R., and only that, and respect that as a modern nation state in friendly competition on the Earth must do.
But The Not-So-Long-Federationed Russia is no such state. It is a rogue state. It is a bad actor. It has bad political genes, bad structure, little to no democratic traditions such as a meaningfully independent media (speaking of our own: yes, there’s bias, yes, there’s an Overton Window, but also our true and honest journalists traditionally don’t turn up expired). Now, Russia does maintain the appearance and procedures of a democracy, but the opposition is controlled. They are not allowed to win elections. They can’t say whatever they want, though they doubtlessly employ a deal of creative latitude in the Russian tongue nonetheless (Russians are unrivalled when it comes to this, out of long necessity). Governors who report honest district results go to jail. (Whatever you think of the merits of the Canadian system overall, we do make every effort to arrive at an honest count.)
Ukraine’s Orange Revolution reflected Ukraine’s determination that their own vote, as Ukrainian[ national]s, was going to be the determiner of the Who Wins in Ukraine. This was a positive political development. Now it is going further, getting now also to Which Way to Go, as Ukraine is now meaningfully policy-independent… at least they must be, if they’re at actual freaking war with “Mother Russia” and prevailing as their own concern in it.
It is Europe’s and the rest of the Well-Civilised World’s wont to help Ukraine come out of the Soviet shadow as a proud Slavic nation wearing blue and gold, which together constitute exactly as many proper colours as Russia! It’s harder for Ukraine than the non-Soviet ex-Warsaw Pact states such as Poland, in that she is coming out from formal incorporation with the Kremlin, not just arms-length puppet statehood. The latter is much easier to break free from. Solid linguistic unity turbo-boosted the Baltic national projects – not to mention they had direct geographic access to European Europe reflected in the medium their aggregated collectivity as three fine nation states names, so they’re not playing the Turkmenistan hand quite exactly – and Belarus wasn’t even as fortunate as Ukraine, lacking a necessity for (a) Belarusian as a State Language, merely including it with Russian. So there wasn’t even a formal lingual basis to do things outside of the Moscovian purview. Heck, the President of Belarus would fancy himself become the Supreme Potentate of the Union State. No way he’s about Belarusian self-determination, other than being the ceremonial homeland of a new administrator of a transnational Eastern Slavic dictatorship consisting of Moscow and her vassal(s). (May the strikethrough one day become furtherly applicable!)
There were other national projects besides the Baltic ones – there were, for example, Kazakhs outside of the R.S.F.S.R. (like Ukraine and the Baltics, forming their own S.S.R. proper) and, for example, Tatars within it. Not to mention Chechens, but they already earned a spree of headlines in the 90s. But Tatarstan had no equivalent to the Chechen War. (This paragraph has been brought to you by: “Visit Tatarstan: The Russian Federation’s Best Kept Secret!”)
The Baltics used their linguistic unity to cleave themselves to the European Community instead of the Kremlin. Places like Turkmenistan set up cults of personality. I mean, Russia is not at all a gigantic European state, notwithstanding that some of it is in Europe geographically if not culturally. So you certainly can’t run an independent democracy sort of inside it, you know? You need some kind of independent access to the outside world not mediated by Moscow or other states joined to it.
Kazakhstan, notwithstanding her noted greatness among the countries of the world, could get Ukrained if it gets in Moscow’s way. Russia has already threatened them. Now, while Russia is free to call Russian Citizens whomever she will, as that is her Sovereign prerogative, she must also respect that there is Russia but also (this is very important) Not Russia, and also that Laws and Norms and Shit that are Not (Necessarily2They may bear coincidental similarity to Russian laws and norms, like how most people agree that murder is wrong (that’s why it’s not mere killing), and so this is reflected in the legal regimes of most states. But whatever the laws and norms are in each state that is Not Russia, the important thing is that they are Not Russia’s to determine.) Russian Apply As Will Vary From Not Russian Nation State to Not Russian Nation State Befitting the Character of Each Not Russian Nation State That, I Repeat for the Sake of Clarity, is Not Russia.
I’ll say this carefully, which is not to assert that it is transpiring or even has ever done (but if you’ve experienced what you’ve experienced, then you’ve certainly experienced that experience), but if – and I do hope this is a big if – if for some reason Kyiv was really truly being dicks to ethnolinguistic Russians who after 1991-08-24 found themselves in a State Called Ukraine, and I mean doing downright bad stuff to them, then maybe there’d be justification for an impromptu golf cart rodeo into the Donbass. But Good Gracious, I should hope no such thing could have been dreamt between Slavic brother nations! Now fair dinkum that not every hour of the mutual history has been sunshine and rainbows every minute. People could get beat up over their expressed mode of linguistic expression at times. There has been bad blood between Russian and Ukrainian, and that is not good.
And the largest engine for maintaining this malsanguinity is this: Russia is a dictatorship incompatible with democratic political will, indeed it is its imperative to inhibit such, especially in a nearby polity with a large Russophone population, perhaps understandably thinking themselves Russians Participating in the State of Ukraine moreso than ethnolingual Ukrainians – be that as it may, per Moscow, there can’t be any kind of European Russian political consciousness allowed, even as participants in a state properly known as Ukraine, which is one of many Not Russias / Actually Goddamned Independent States Tango Yankee Victor Mike that preponderate upon the planet. (“Whether or not you Sprake Ye Olde Schevchenko, the State of Ukraine is a modern liberal polity with rights for linguistic minorities, including speakers of Crimean Tatar, Polish, Belarusian, Esperanto, Romanian, Romansh, Rajasthani, Rohingya, Rapanui, and several other languages beginning with R in Webster’s but not necessarily an exhaustive listing-out therein!”)
There must somehow be compatibility of Russophonic Culture with Properly Ukrainian Sovereignty, inasmuch as the State of Ukraine is properly and solely that. Not every Ukrainian National who will ever live is Ukrainian either linguistically or ethnically. (Nor need they even be the kind of Orthodox you would first think of!) Crimea particularly has Tatars, there were once Khanates there, today there are many Russians, and I’ve heard also some “Ukrainian Ukrainians”, or at least it’s been so. The citizenry of Odessa speaks Ye Olde High Muscovian, but they need not necessarily be antagonistic to the Ukrainian national project that they have the right as “Citizens-of-the-Ukrainian-State Ukrainians” to participate in.
Fun fact: Russian speakers vote in Ukrainian national elections. Indeed, they must do, for else how may they express their just proportion of democratic will within an Europeanising Ukraine?
There is a certain arbitrariness to nationality – that is, why this tongue and not that one, why these colours and not those, why this anthem and not something else – and it’s not healthy to take it excessively seriously. It is also simply not true that all other countries besides one’s own are run by little girls, although in some cases that may constitute an improvement. What we’re all after in the end as particular persons is freedom and quality of life. The rest of the world has a keen humanitarian interest in helping Ukraine to obtain and maintain these goods, to set and uphold an example of good among the post-Soviet Cyrillic connoisseurs.