Ukraine: Its Inner Enemy

Ukrainians, like every historical nation, were destined to go through the loss of statehood, an attempt at cultural assimilation, revanchist terror, and reconciliation based on mutual repentance.

The collapse of empires in the 1920s–30s marked for the Poles the construction of their new national state. However, the problem of the new Polish territories and the people living there quickly arose. The southeastern Polish lands — now western Ukraine — were subjected to a policy of forced assimilation. Any political activity based on the idea of Ukrainian identity, and even more so on the pursuit of autonomy, was prohibited.

Discrimination and the de facto extralegal status of the Ukrainian idea in Poland became one of the reasons for the cruel fate of the Poles during the Nazi occupation in the years of the Second World War. Ukrainian nationalists from different organizations committed acts of mass violence against Poles in Volhynia, taking the lives of a significant part of the Polish population and partisans. And even though these events left a deep wound in the memory of both nations, they also set a difficult context for any future attempts at dialogue.

But, as the history of such catastrophes shows, when the situation for the parties takes on a cooling character — as, for example, with the occupation of Ukraine by the USSR and the establishment of the socialist regime in Poland — with the end of the war and the change of generations, a demand arises for the restoration of relations and reconciliation. First among intellectuals, and then among the younger generation, who did not experience the war.

Since 1991, Ukraine and Poland, having become independent from the USSR and the socialist system, have moved to the last open stage of reconciliation. In western Ukraine, as in Poland, there were still veterans of the past war. But now they spoke not about hated enemies, but about the former burden of their struggle. And it is telling how every Ukrainian president, visiting western Ukraine or Poland, repented on behalf of all Ukrainians and called what had happened a “tragedy.” In response, Polish-Ukrainian cooperation was recognized as key in the early period of Russia’s invasion in 2022.

The presidents of both countries presented reconciliation not as a one-time act, but as a long process of healing. In this sense, Thatcher’s aphorism, “To win a battle, you sometimes have to fight it twice…” precisely reflects the essence of what the struggle between Poles and Ukrainians eventually turned into. The war for victory transformed into a war for peace, opening the way to a long process of reconciliation, accelerating with the arrival of a new generation. For them, the war will no longer have the symbolic meaning that inspired their parents. The value of symbols changes over time. For example, for the generation of the 1930s–40s, communist ideology was still modern and inspiring. But already their children, the generation of the 1970s, were discovering new symbols of their own. Western music, nationalism, or even religion, in the times of the stagnant atheist USSR, inspired rebellion and the fight against rules.

However, when the values of the younger generation meet resistance from the older, a whirlpool of cultural revolution opens, which will sweep away entire generations with their old values and symbolism. The generation of war and cultural antagonism risks being left on the sidelines of life, when instead of respect and victory, a dull peace will come.

The Philosophy of Cultural Antagonism

With the 2014 revolution, Ukraine made a conscious choice to follow the European path, paying for it with war against Russia. But along with this comes an obligation — to follow the centuries-old experience of European civilization. The main principles there are complexity and the reversibility of situations on the ground, where borders may change hundreds of times. And at the core of this lies the defense of ideas that resonate with the people, at times more significant than territories. Yet the most important principle comes from Christianity, as Roger Scruton wrote: in the Christian tradition, the main acts of sacrifice are confession and forgiveness. If Ukrainians sacrifice resentment, in return they will become part of the Great European civilization, which will provide the long-awaited key to the path toward truth.

The false path in this European civilizational plan is to surrender positions on the intellectual front, in the battle for people’s minds. Instead of creating and preserving a national idea — an empty struggle for territories. And instead of rational communication with the people — propaganda. Ukrainians are nurtured with the narrative of seeing a Russian trace in every internal conflict. From this flows the idea of resisting Russia within themselves, suppressing creativity and the inner voice with fear and caution. Thus a mania is born, a true neurosis of resistance. Its essence lies not in striving for something unattainable, but in the fact that people are not allowed to be themselves, bound by the fear of conformity.

Any issue of state-building — and thus also the work of civil society, which is its driving part — is posed from the position of “escaping from Russia.” Such a framework in posing questions hinders creativity, draining people’s strength to comply with an ever-growing number of restrictions. And the paradox is that the more Ukraine tries to oppose Russia in everyday life, the stronger the influence of these restrictions becomes. Subconsciously, Russia will continue to be present in Ukraine — not externally, but as an inner shadow: in the form of self-censorship and anxious control.

The narrative imposed by propaganda — that everything Russian is evil and against us — calls into question the essence of Ukrainians. For it distances people not only from the shared culture that both nations created together for centuries, but also from the very fact of their physical closeness. After all, according to research, about half of all residents of Ukraine have relatives in Russia. The second part of the narrative is the complete prohibition of elements of one’s own culture that would fall under Russian influence. The Russian language, the church, and the Soviet past have become convenient labels for propaganda, which has found in them enemies of Ukraine.

Denial of Linguistic Identity for Eastern Ukraine

Regional features of identity in Ukraine are often expressed through linguistic culture. They are especially strongly manifested in the fast everyday speech of western Ukraine or the east, where regions are geographically closer to Russia. For example, in cases where by context it would be more accurate to say “Slavic girl,” a person might, without thinking — that is, subconsciously — choose the form “Russian girl,” despite the national connotation of this word. Such regional features of identity make up a rich cultural diversity that enriches the nation. In place of this, the trend promoted by activists forces a person into self-suppression in the name of greater conformity to a narrow national project. This makes cultural variety poorer, even though by its very nature it is closer to democracy than the promoted narrow identity.

Involuntarily, during conversations in Ukrainian, both among ordinary people and in professors’ lectures at colleges, Russian-language speech constructions sometimes arise. These are often quotations learned back in student years during the Russian-speaking USSR. In practice, teachers insert them in the original Russian with slight awkwardness, so as not to waste time thinking about a translation. Although by law, all teaching must be conducted exclusively in Ukrainian. In wider use, the regular mixing of Russian and Ukrainian languages began to be classified as an idiom. And if in western Ukraine such an idiom is often called a dialect and presented as an example of cultural richness, then in eastern Ukraine the mixing of Ukrainian with Russian was given the informal name “Surzhyk.” The word first arose as a designation for a mixture of grains, not as a linguistic term.

The position of the idiom in eastern Ukraine is explained by the fact that it arose forcibly, from linguicide during the Soviet era. That is, it is not considered natural. Whereas the western idiom, on the contrary, is recognized as a full-fledged dialect, despite having undergone the same processes of linguicide — only not from the Bolsheviks, but from the Polish government. These double standards often put pressure on ordinary people who speak in the Russian-Ukrainian idiom. It is as if eastern Ukraine is denied the general principle of the wealth of Ukrainian traditions. Instead, activists place only pure Ukrainian language in the correct position.

And although activists and the state rightly emphasize the study of the culture of the western regions with their regional idioms and dialects arising from proximity to Poland, Hungary, and Romania, all this good fades when turning to the eastern regions, which are denied diversity and their own linguistic culture because of their greater connection with Russia, from which they cannot escape by their very nature.

Consequence: Weakening of National Loyalty

As Roger Scruton noted: “National loyalty is based on love for place, customs, and traditions inscribed in the landscape, and on the desire to protect these goods through a common law and a common loyalty…” In the Ukrainian context, this raises a key question: can eastern Ukrainians, who in the context of war have come under pressure because of the otherness of their language and culture, remain nationally loyal? If their ethnic identity, naturally and geographically, was formed under the influence of Russian identity — just as, for example, the identity of a western Ukrainian was formed under the influence of Poland — then if modern Ukraine dictates that they cut off and reshape their identity, it does not drive them away from Russia. It drives its own people from the eastern regions away from itself. For it calls into question the very idea of national loyalty, depriving it of its connection with regional identity.

Therefore, it is important already now to move away from the obsessive search for an enemy outside the real front. To abandon the negative labeling of everything Russian within one’s own citizens. This will give Ukrainian consciousness a chance to free itself from the constant need to see an enemy where there is none, and from the paradox that leads to destructive self-control. Thus, the generation of war will be able to free itself from the identity of antagonism, overcome the fear of not fitting into a narrow national project, and together with the youth be able to assess the situation of war and peace soberly, with the desire to preserve national unity and a future without revanchism.

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