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  When Vladimir Putin declared at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest that “Ukraine is a made-up country,” he was stating what many Russians believe to be historical fact. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist leader of Russia’s falsely named Liberal Democratic Party, put it a bit more bluntly in 2014: “Why don’t we take eastern Ukraine and give Poland the west? Then it can be back to the way it’s always been.”

  Ukrainians would not, of course, agree. The country has a rich history, albeit one that has always unfolded in Russia’s shadow.

  Slavic culture began in Kiev in the ninth century, when two priests, Cyril and Methodius, settled the territory, bringing with them the Orthodox Church and an entirely new language. Cyrillic, the alphabet of both Russian and Ukrainian (with some small differences), takes its name from Saint Cyril. In the fourteenth century, Ukraine was a center of Slavic civilization, evidenced today by some of the most extraordinary onion-domed churches in all of Eastern Europe. From the sixteenth century on, however, Ukraine’s unfortunate geography—no natural barriers but very desirable access to the Black Sea—would leave it vulnerable to more powerful states. The Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Germany at one time or another incorporated parts—or sometimes all—of Ukraine within their territory.

  Ukraine’s brief periods of independence came at those moments when empires collapsed or big states were defeated. In 1918, the death of the Russian Empire allowed the creation of a new Ukrainian state. That would last three years until the Russian Red Army conquered two-thirds of the country. The western third was incorporated into Poland. Josef Stalin’s brutal campaign of “Russification” quickly wiped out vestiges of Ukrainian identity. Russian became obligatory in all schools and was designated the official language of the Ukrainian government.

  Then, in 1939, taking advantage of a temporary alliance with Hitler, Stalin’s forces seized most of the land of western Ukraine. Of course, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was ephemeral—broken in June 1941 by the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. As the Wehrmacht pushed east, Ukraine was devastated by the Nazis’ occupation and extermination policies, which resulted in the deaths of five million Ukrainians (about one-eighth of the total population) and a majority of its one and a half million Jews.

  But the collapse of Soviet power led some within Ukraine to make a fatal choice. Hitler encouraged the establishment of an independent Republic of Ukraine, a satrapy that muddied the story of Ukrainian resistance to the Nazis. Faced with two historical enemies—Russia and Germany—some fought the former and others the latter. Those in the East overwhelmingly fought with Russia. This handed Stalin an exaggerated charge of western Ukrainian collaboration with the Third Reich. He used that indictment to justify the brutal repression of any vestige of resistance to Moscow. The false narrative of a collaborationist western Ukraine exists to this day, fueling hatred on both sides. At war’s end, Ukraine returned to its prewar status as a republic of the Soviet Union. There, politics languished, dependent in large part on the few openings Moscow provided.

  One such opportunity came after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev’s reforms now seem modest in comparison to what Gorbachev would launch thirty years later. At the time, though, they were dramatic. Like Gorbachev, he sought to put the Soviet Union on a firmer, more legitimate footing, denouncing Stalin’s brutality in a secret speech to the 1956 Party Congress. The remarks were leaked (probably by Khrushchev’s enemies) and were an immediate sensation. This gave rise to a brief period of reform and outspokenness in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.

  The Hungarian Revolution later that year ended the Kremlin’s tolerance for dissent in the bloc, though. And when Khrushchev was ousted, any remaining vestiges of the thaw went with him. In Ukraine, human rights activists were put on trial, dissidents were arrested, and tough new measures were adopted against Crimean Tatars. The latter, a restive, majority-Muslim population, had suffered large-scale deportation under Stalin and had long sought a return to their homeland. The new constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic made clear that that would not happen. The Brezhnev period was a sterile one for politics anywhere in the bloc and the republics were made to toe a very narrow line.

  Then the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev loosened Moscow’s grip throughout the region. Ironically, it might have been the horror of the meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl that was at least in part responsible for glasnost associated with Gorbachev. Despite the danger to surrounding populations, nearly three full days passed before the Soviet media acknowledged the incident, and even then it was said only that an “accident” had occurred and that authorities had taken measures to “eliminate the consequences.” Meanwhile, the scope of the catastrophe was becoming increasingly clear on the other side of the Iron Curtain, as countries such as Sweden began to report dangerous levels of radioactivity. Eighteen days passed before Gorbachev addressed the incident himself, and he gave very few details. He later told President George H. W. Bush that he had learned a lesson from this experience. “You have to tell people the truth,” he said. “It is worse when you hide it and they find out anyway.”

  Ukraine’s Democratic Opening

  The Gorbachev reforms gave Kiev its first opening to build nascent democratic institutions. As in Moscow, civic groups protesting everything from efforts—or the lack thereof—to deal with the aftermath of the reactor disaster, to language issues, to political freedoms dotted the landscape. By 1988, a burgeoning nationalist movement had taken root. Known as the Ukrainian People’s Movement for Restructuring (Rukh), it was led by some of the country’s most famous writers and intellectuals. Gorbachev gave a further push to these activities when he replaced one of his opponents, Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, as head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in September 1989. On the heels of that, the Rukh held its first national congress and began to prepare for elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet.

  Ukraine was alive with political activity. And much of the action was in the parliament with its new chairman, Leonid Kravchuk. He was a communist but facile and able to seize upon and appropriate the nationalist mood of the country. Under his leadership, Ukraine’s Soviet parliament annulled Article 6 of the constitution, eliminating the Communist Party’s principal role in politics. Within parliament, the communists were split between reformers and conservatives—the former making common cause with the fledgling democratic opposition.2

  Yet Ukrainian domestic politics was intertwined with the question of independence. This complicated relations between Gorbachev’s reformers and Boris Yeltsin’s separatists in Moscow and those advocating for change in Kiev. In 1990, a newly elected parliament declared Ukraine sovereign but stopped short of calling for an independent state. The difference was something akin to a nullification movement, serving notice that Ukraine’s laws were superior to those of the Soviet Union. John C. Calhoun would have recognized this stand.

  It was a delicate balance. Gorbachev had been Ukraine’s benefactor, but Yeltsin was pushing harder toward the breakup of the Soviet Union. Thus when Gorbachev, desperate to save the USSR, proposed reforms to the relationship between the republics and the center in the summer of 1991, the Ukrainian parliament was reluctant to go along.

  Then, later that summer, hard-liners finally acted to change the course of events in Moscow. They launched a coup against Gorbachev, imprisoning him in Crimea and declaring themselves the new leaders of the Soviet Union. The events served only to quicken the impulse toward independence in Ukraine and other republics. The coup failed and Gorbachev returned to the Kremlin late on August 21, 1991.

  But the landscape had changed dramatically in his absence. Trying to find a formula to save the USSR, Gorbachev undertook a series of desperate steps. He resigned as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, removed political commissars from the security services, and moved to disband the Central Committee. He was seeking to accelerate the political refor
ms, still trying to make the Soviet Union a “normal country.” But it was too late. Four months later, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine established the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Soviet Union came to an end. Ukraine was finally independent.

  Independent but Still Divided

  The country remained very much a three-part entity, though—western Ukraine (Ukrainian-speaking), eastern Ukraine (largely Russian-speaking), and Crimea. Ninety-two percent of the inhabitants voted for independence in the western part of the country and 80 percent in the east. In Crimea, 54 percent voted to separate from the Soviet Union.

  Until Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, many had forgotten its strange history. Crimea is a beautiful area along the Black Sea that was conquered by Catherine the Great in 1784. This allowed the landlocked Russian Empire to finally have access to a warm-water port. For almost three hundred years, Crimea was an important military asset and a playground for well-to-do Russians who vacationed on its shore, which enjoys an extraordinary Mediterranean climate.

  In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev had a bizarre and, in retrospect, foolish idea. Why not give Crimea back to Ukraine to celebrate three hundred years of friendship between the peoples? It didn’t matter, of course, since Ukraine was an integral part of the Soviet Union, ruled by Moscow and serving its interests.

  That is until December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union’s collapse created fifteen newly independent states, including Ukraine. A Russian friend likened the loss of Ukraine to having an arm amputated, and the loss of Crimea as tearing out a piece of your heart.

  Still, in the early years, the separation proceeded relatively smoothly. The Ukrainians, after some prodding by the United States and Europe, stepped aside so that Russia would be the “successor” state to the Soviet Union. In diplomatic terms this meant that Moscow would retain its status as a Permanent Five member of the UN Security Council. After initially declaring that it would destroy the nuclear weapons on its territory, Kiev agreed to have them transferred to Russian soil. About one-fifth of the Soviet Union’s arsenal was on Ukraine’s territory, so this was no small concession. Early on, Kiev claimed that the Black Sea Fleet (which had existed since Catherine the Great) was an “integral part of the Ukrainian armed forces.” This led the parliament in Moscow to declare that Sevastopol in Crimea was a Russian city. Eventually, the Ukrainians backed down, granting Moscow control of roughly 90 percent of the base there. The new security relationship was codified in two agreements. In 1994, in exchange for a non-nuclear Ukraine, Russia promised to respect the territorial integrity of its neighbor. A broader ten-year treaty was signed in 1997, including arrangements for Sevastopol. Again Moscow declared Ukraine’s borders inviolable. The two seemed to settle into a relatively amicable relationship between democratizing countries.

  “Vote for Us and You’ll Never Have to Vote Again”

  But Ukraine began to stumble almost immediately as it tried to carve out an identity divorced from its neighbor. Think back to the comment that losing Ukraine was like an amputation. Essentially all of the Soviet Union was hacked into parts. The infrastructure of a single country was divided at the borders of several—whether the division made sense or not. Gas pipelines, the electrical grid, industrial sites, even military bases were affected. In one peculiar incident, Soviet cosmonauts had to orbit in space while Russia and Kazakhstan negotiated the right for them to touch down. They had taken off from the Soviet Union. The landing strip now belonged to Kazakhstan.

  Ukraine was most affected by the sudden dissolution and the divorce from Russia. Yes, independence felt good. But the two countries were inextricably tied together. Intermarriage between Russians and Ukrainians was commonplace. Russians had dachas in Ukraine and Ukrainians had dachas in Russia.

  And of the two, Ukraine was clearly poorer and less developed. This was particularly true in terms of human capital. In Soviet times, upward mobility usually meant getting out of Kiev. The great universities and the best scientific institutes were in Russia. The most accomplished artists performed at the Bolshoi in Moscow and the Kirov in Leningrad. The political up-and-comers and the best technocrats headed for the Soviet capital. Even the most vibrant dissident movements and human rights advocates were in Russia, not Ukraine.

  Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine’s first president, was a clever communist who skillfully led the country to independence. But he turned out to be less effective at governing. Not surprisingly, Ukraine experienced immediate economic chaos because divorced from Russia it had a far inferior base for its economy. In Russia, rapid privatization was the culprit. Ukraine did the same, privatizing a large industrial base, but one that did not rival Moscow’s for sophistication and talent. Still, a class of oligarchs found plenty to buy, and, as in Russia, these rich beneficiaries dotted the landscape in Kiev and across the country.

  Ukraine’s first steps after independence were faulty at best. Its first prime minister, Leonid Kuchma, was appointed in October 1992 and resigned just one year later. He went into opposition, blaming the president for blocking his reform efforts and promising to run against him in the upcoming elections. He did so and defeated Kravchuk decisively, winning 52 percent of the vote.

  I was traveling in Kiev in 1994, a couple of months before those elections took place. I was joined by my colleague from Stanford, Chip Blacker. We had just been in Moscow, where new restaurants, hotels, and shopping malls masked much of the economic turmoil that ordinary Russians were experiencing. There was no such Potemkin village in Kiev. The buildings were as run-down and the hotels as grim as in Soviet times. As we walked along, a campaign poster caught my eye. Russian speakers can read Ukrainian relatively easily. I turned to Chip. “Does that really say what I think it does?” I asked him. “Yep. Vote for us and you’ll never have to vote again.” We chuckled, knowing that the party in question probably meant it as a promise to govern wisely. The poster didn’t quite capture the essence of electoral democracy. And neither did Ukraine’s first leaders.

  The first post-Soviet constitution was based on a promising institutional balance. Adopted in 1996, two years after Kuchma became president, the document established a mixed system with the president as head of state and the prime minister as head of government. The parliament was accorded considerable de jure authority to check the power of the president.

  But because the communists were the largest faction, though not a majority, they engaged in blocking maneuvers constantly. Liberal forces fought among themselves, somehow more threatened by each other than by the communists. Kuchma was frustrated with both and threatened to launch a sweeping constitutional referendum. The challenge worked and the liberals united momentarily to oust the pro-communist speaker. The new leader of the parliament pledged cooperation with the president, who was clearly strengthened by the events that had transpired.

  President Kuchma did not waste the moment and sponsored and won a more limited referendum. He would now have the right, under certain circumstances, to disband the legislature. Though the constitution was not amended to reflect the change (it would have taken a two-thirds vote of the parliament), Kuchma governed as if it were. The presidency had become by far the strongest post-Soviet institution in Ukraine.

  The other means of balance, the relationship between the president and the prime minister, didn’t hold either. The unenviable job of fixing the economy always fell to the latter, providing successive presidents with someone to blame when reform failed. And there were plenty of failures. Ukraine’s early history was therefore one of a tug-of-war between the two offices and a series of short-term prime ministers.

  In 1998, Kuchma turned to Viktor Yushchenko, who had been chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine. The president desperately needed a competent prime minister. Yushchenko had the right credentials. He was best known for having successfully introduced the country’s currency, the hryvnia, and skillfully moderating the effects on Ukraine of the Russian financial crisis of 1998. He did his job well, achieving growth rates above 5 percent
after nine years of contraction and earning the respect and approval of the IMF and the World Bank.

  Despite his sterling record, the Yushchenko government was dismissed following a no-confidence vote in the parliament after only one year. It seems the prime minister had angered powerful business interests with his aggressive anticorruption campaign. Yushchenko also ran afoul of the president, who became jealous of his successful and popular colleague. The ousted prime minister decided to form a coalition called Our Ukraine. In the parliamentary elections the next year, the new party won 112 seats. Yulia Tymoshenko, a wealthy oligarch allied with Yushchenko, did well too. Together they lacked a majority, but their bloc was influential and vibrant.

  Now Kuchma had real opposition—and he did not react in a democratic spirit. Rather, the president turned to old authoritarian methods. Journalists were increasingly intimidated. The government issued a secret order forcing the media to print stories sponsored by the government (temnyky). Kuchma appointed a corrupt and hard-line former communist apparatchik to carry out his orders. He sacked yet another prime minister, bringing an ally, Viktor Yanukovych, the governor of the Donetsk region in the east, to Kiev.

  But by March 2003, Kuchma was losing his grip on the country. He had clearly underestimated the degree to which freedom of association and a still relatively independent press would complicate his efforts to crack down on dissent. Tens of thousands demonstrated, demanding his resignation and constitutional changes to limit the power of the president. Media outlets began to report instances of corruption within the Kuchma clique. The use of temnyky was openly reported, and protested too. And a few brave journalists began to publish stories questioning the president’s role in the disappearance of opposition figures.

  Then a small city election in a remote region gave the opposition a rallying point. Ernest Nuser, Kuchma’s candidate, defeated Our Ukraine’s candidate, Viktor Baloha, in a contest widely regarded as fraudulent. Observers reported incidents of violence and ballot tampering. The reaction was intense, many worrying that the events portended similar ones in the upcoming presidential elections. Nuser had to resign as mayor one month later.