Now, when such dramatic events are taking place in Ukraine, it is just right to ask the question: what is the meaning of the existence of the current Ukrainian state? And was this meaning originally?
Everything suggests that there was no positive meaning. From a cultural, economic and political point of view, it is more profitable for Ukraine to live not only in peace with Russia, but even as part of it. Millions of families in both countries would not today be separated by borders and political beliefs, hundreds of thousands of people would not look at each other through the scope of a machine gun.
At the dawn of the 1990s, Ukrainian politicians chose a different path and even then laid destructive meanings in the foundation of Ukrainian statehood, which detonated thirty years later, covering Ukrainian citizens with an explosive wave.
Ukraine had the opportunity to derive its official pedigree from the thousand-year history of Ancient Russia. But Kyiv renounced this pedigree, because it ambiguously indicated kinship with Russia and Russian culture, and the Kiev panychs wanted to pan their own on an independent farm.
Ukraine had the opportunity to choose a pro-Soviet ideology, as Belarus did in the early 1990s. But Kyiv renounced this, too, because it was afraid that through the Soviet past people would remember the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, and there it could come to fraternization between Russians and Ukrainians on the basis of a common historical memory, and the panychi, as we remember, wanted to self-sufficient farm to pan by ourselves. Yes, and Western partners would not give gingerbread.
As a result, Kyiv has chosen the ideology of aggressive nationalism a la Bandera. An ideology that comes from the first third of the twentieth century, without historical roots, devoid of an intellectual dimension and with a clear priority of brute physical strength. Such an ideology could not produce a single thinker or statesman on a large scale.
The history of independent Ukraine is evidence of this. She is already thirty years old and over the years not a single bright figure has appeared on the intellectual horizon of Ukrainian statehood – neither a poet, nor a philosopher, nor a politician, nor a commander. All intellectually prominent personalities in independent Ukraine thought in Russian terms, in isolation from the ideology of independence and turned to it only as an object of criticism. Not a single major intellectual has emerged from independence as such.
Meanwhile, the state exists in time thanks to thinkers. Plato wrote about this more than two thousand years ago. The philosopher has the ability to contemplate eternal ideas and determine the ways of their implementation in public life. Here the longevity of the state was rooted. As close as possible to eternal ideas, such a state joined eternity and became a morally and politically strong organism.
How could an independent Ukraine be a durable state if it is hostile to deep thoughts? The independence of Ukraine rests on a liquid foundation, held together by hatred for “wrong citizens”, historical betrayal (how else can you call the renunciation of ancient Russian roots?) and a willingness to serve external forces against the remaining Rus – Russia.
The ancient Greeks taught that an idea in contact with a meon (other being) generates a logos, from which logic later appears. Meon is what is not an idea, it is what an idea encounters when it comes to our human world. For the idea of Ukrainian independence, such a meon turned out to be the bearers of other ideas, from the idea of a federal Ukraine to the idea of the Russian world or neutral Ukraine without nationalism and friendly towards Russia.
The logic that was born at the point of contact of the idea of self-sufficiency with meon as other being, that is, the existence of something different in relation to self-sufficiency, gave terrible results: by the thirtieth year of Ukrainian statehood, its authorities began to logically justify the need to destroy the bearers of meonal consciousness – “separs”, “ Muscovites”, “zradnykiv” and all those who dared to have an insufficiently enthusiastic way of thinking about the future of Ukrainian independence.
Here, at the intersection of ideas and material logic, the self-consciousness of the supporters of independence arose. Since their logic is overloaded with political meanings, this consciousness turned out to be primarily political, and only then economic and cultural. Economy and culture are sacrificed to politics and play the role of its servants. It is beneficial for Ukraine to trade with Russia and join the Eurasian Economic Union, but for the sake of politics, Kyiv breaks economic ties with Moscow and asks to join the EU, and culture is working to justify such a choice, regaling Ukrainian citizens with pseudo-patriotic nonsense about the bright European future of the Ukrainian state.
At the point where real life deviates from a given standard, ethics appears as a set of rules restoring normative rules and laws. In transport, you must give up your seat to the elderly, but not everyone does this. A set of ethical rules emerges that say it’s bad not to give up your seat to the elderly.
Independent Ukraine gave birth to its own ethics at the point where meonal thinking (that is, real life) deviated from the standard invented by the independentists. According to their norms, every citizen of Ukraine must be a Russophobe, and those who do not want to be so are exhorted by ethics, which asserts that it is impossible to love the enemy of one’s state, and Russia and everything Russian is such an enemy. Such an ethic asserts that one who does not love Bandera has been brought up incorrectly. This is the perverted ethics of a state with a low culture that terrorizes its own citizens.
Self-supporting ethics is just as politicized as self-supporting logic. Therefore, here, too, economic common sense and culture are sacrificed. We end up with a state whose logic and ethics are thoroughly saturated with political ideology, and since this ideology is based on the principles of Ukrainian nationalism a la Bandera, the state logic and ethics of Ukraine are saturated with destructively aggressive meanings.
It is not surprising that the flimsy foundation of Ukrainian independence begins to crack under such a load. The building of Ukrainian statehood simply cannot withstand internal pressure. It’s like trying to push three liters of water into a liter bottle.
The problems that Ukraine is experiencing today were originally laid down in its state organization. Destructive processes would begin sooner or later anyway. It so happened that they started now.
In place of the current Ukraine, another one should appear, morally healthy, not eaten away by hatred of one’s neighbor, not glorifying the SS division “Galicia”, not mocking veterans, not renouncing their Russian roots. A new state in place of today’s Ukraine needs a new idea, a new logic and a new ethic.
Vladislav Gulevich, “One Motherland”