Many times in order to decide what to do next, especially when combatting Kremlin propaganda, it’s very useful to look back at the past. In fact, it’s imperative to look at the past because, as the writer-philosopher George Santayana once said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The basic root cause of all this is colonialism. The easiest way to explain what colonialism is this scenario: Let’s say you have a home with a spouse, children, and pets. You are living an independent life and you’re basically a happy and contented person. One day I come to your home and tell you that your home now belongs to me. What’s more, you and your family will be required to do work for me and handover everything you produce to me. While I will protect you from other potential enemies and predators, I won’t be paying you anything because you and your family are my personal slaves.
Naturally your response would be to tell me to fuck off and get the hell off of your property. If I were someone who cared only about gaining wealth and power and nothing else, including respecting your own wishes, I would not only ignore you but I would purchase weapons and even recruit help where we would attack you, your home, and your family until you surrender. Your home will belong to me and you and your family will become my slaves. I will become fabulously rich while you and your family descend into poverty.
When that scenario is applied to countries and mass groups of people, you’ll get the basic essence of colonialism.
There was a time when various European powers decided to build empires by going to a certain part of the world and dominate that area along with the people who lived there. The main reason for this was to extract natural resources that those areas had without even providing much compensation fo the people who lived there. What Russia is doing to Ukraine is basically a modern-day version of colonialism.
The late political blogger Steve Gilliard did a multi-part series on colonialism in his own blog way back in 2004 that is incredibly detailed and well-researched and it still remains online after all these years. While the focus is more on Western European colonialism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, you can get a gist of what exactly is colonialism and how the issue of colonialism is relevant to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Part 2: The Portuguese in Africa.
Part 3: The American colonization of the Philippines.
Part 4: King Leopold II and the creation of the Belgian Congo.
Part 5: The collapse of the Belgian rule in the Congo.
Part 6: The United Nations and the Congo.
Part 7: How did Indonesia become a colony?
Part 8: The Indonesian war of independence.
Part 9: The colonial efforts of the Dutch.
Part 10: The bloody end of the British rule in Kenya.
Part 11: The single worst massacre in British colonial history.
Part 12: The Indian National Army.
Part 13: The partition of India.
Part 14: The French repression on Madagascar.
Part 15: Keeping the Vietnamese natives in line.
Part 16: The end of colonial rule in Vietnam.
Part 17: Civilizing the Algerians.
Part 19: Going after the riches of Egypt.
Part 20: Egypt, Sudan, the Ottoman Empire, and the British.
Part 21: Egypt is occupied by the British.
Part 22: More about the British occupation of Egypt.
Part 24: The French in the Middle East.
Part 25: Keeping Algeria French.
Part 26: The Fight for Algeria.
Part 27: The Algerian Uprising of 1955.
Part 28: Torture in the Algerian war.
Part 28 B: The legacy of torture in Algeria.
Part 29: The War of the Algerians.
Part 30: Charles DeGaulle in Algeria.
Part 31: The wars within the Algerian war.
Part 32: World War I and the British Mandate.
Part 33: The Iraqis never really trusted the British to deliver their freedom.
Part 34: Tax collection through terror bombing in Iraq.
Part 35: T.E. Lawrence in Mesopotamia.
Part 37: The 1941 invasion of Iraq.
As for Russia, if you do a minimal Wikipedia search, you’d know that Russia has a long history of wars and conquests going as far back as the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1390. The reason why Russia grew so large that it encompasses both Europe and Asia isn’t because the Russians offered the indigenous peoples of the affected territories milk and cookies along with smiles and offers of utopia and eternal friendship if they voluntarily joined Russia. In reality the Russians frequently initiated wars that resulted in conquest and they are trying to do so again with its latest invasion of Ukraine.
Russian propaganda will say that Ukraine was never a real country, it has always been a part of Russia, Russians and Ukrainians are “brother Slavs” who belong together, the Ukrainian language is really a dialect of Russian, etc. If you look at the history of Ukraine, you’ll question the Russian narrative that Russia and Ukraine are one and the same.
It would take several blog posts to do justice to Ukrainian history mainly because its history goes as far back as prehistoric times. To put things into perspective, by the time my country, the United States of America, declared its independence from England in 1776, the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv alone had already been in existence for 1,294 years. (It was officially founded in 482 CE.)
Russia and its sycophants in the West will frequently say that Ukraine has only been an independent nation since 1991. In reality Ukraine has been independent at various times throughout its history before 1991.
Since prehistoric times people had been settling in what is now Ukraine. That nation became officially an independent country for the first time in the year 882 under the name that was spelled alternatively as Kievan Rus’ and Kyivan Rus’. That country fell to the Mongol invasion that took place from 1237-1241.
The country that would one day become Ukraine tried its hand at being an independent nation for a second time. Emerging from the ruins of the Kyvivan Rus’ in 1253 was the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia. That period ended in 1392 when this area was conquered and ultimately incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In 1648 the area that would one day be known as Ukraine tried its hand at independence for a third time. A group of warriors known as cossacks managed to liberate the area from the ruling Poles. The country became known as the Cossack Hetmanate. That lasted until 1764 when, faced with the constant threat from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the cossacks turned towards Russia for protection in exchange for allegiance to the Russian tsar. The Cossack Hetmanate was initially granted autonomy within the Russian state. This led to the Russo-Polish War, which lasted until 1667 when half of the Cossack Hetmanate became part of Russia and the other half became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
For the next several decades there would be more wars on the European continent that would lead to conquered countries and/or collapsing empires followed by more wars on the European continent that would lead to conquered countries and/or collapsing empires, etc. By the time of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the eastern half of Ukraine would remain part of the Russian Empire while the western half would end up becoming part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A fourth chance for Ukraine to become an independent nation wouldn’t come until the early 20th century. In 1917, in the wake of the chaos that was created by both World War I and the Russian Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power and created the Soviet Union, the eastern part of Ukraine that was under Russian domination took advantage of the situation by proclaiming itself as an independent nation known as the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The following year the other divided Ukrainian half that was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire took advantage of that empire’s collapse by declaring independence as the West Ukrainian People’s Republic or West Ukrainian National Republic.
By January, 1919 both the Ukrainian People’s Republic and West Ukrainian People’s Republic decided to merge together into a single Ukraine. That newly independent nation turned out to be a short-lived one when, by March 1919, the Bolsheviks began its takeover of Ukraine and forcibly merge it with the Soviet Union. Ukraine ceased to exist as an independent country after the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and it became a Soviet state known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922.
Ukraine wouldn’t get a chance to become an independent nation for a fifth time until 1991. In the meantime it had to deal with bad treatment from the Soviets, which included Stalin’s purges, the Holodomor, war crimes committed by the Soviets during and after World War II, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It was when the Soviet Union began to literally fall apart in 1991 that Ukraine declared its independence once again.
But then there was this major fear when the Soviet Union disbanded: Many of the Soviet nuclear weapons were placed in Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine had the world’s third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile but Ukraine had no control over them because Russia had the codes needed to operate those weapons. There was this paranoid scenario: What if, sometime in the future, Ukraine ends up electing a leader who’s a typical authoritarian dictator but managed to gain access to the nuclear codes needed to launch those weapons at anyone depending on that dictator’s whim? It could be a potential worldwide calamity that would make the nuclear bombs that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II seem like a walk in the park by comparison.
This led to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which was signed in Budapest on December 5, 1994 by the then-leaders of the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States, Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine. This memorandum prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan with the exception of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. In exchange for that assurance, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan would give up their nuclear weapons.
Had all of the signatories to the Budapest Memorandum adhered to this, it would’ve provided an excellent example of how countries could get rid of nuclear weapons without fear of being invaded by another country or become embroiled into a war.
But one country ultimately ended up ignoring the Budapest Memorandum—Russia. It all started when Ukraine’s ability to remain independent was first threatened in 2014 in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution of Dignity. Russia annexed Crimea and encouraged the formation in the eastern region of Ukraine of the so-called independent republics of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donesk People’s Republic. But Ukraine’s struggle to remain independent became dire when it was invaded by Russia in 2022 followed by the Russian annexation of both the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics that same year. Now Ukraine is fighting this war against Russia in an effort to remain independent.
Meanwhile the United States and the United Kingdom are trying to uphold their end of the Budapest Memorandum by supplying Ukraine with weapons to help it fight off Russia.
Ukraine is only fighting this war that Russia started in an act of self-defense. The Ukrainians will frequently say that if Russia stops fighting and withdraws its troops from Ukraine, then the war will be over but if Ukraine stops fighting then there will be no more independent Ukraine.
That brief history I wrote in this post just barely scratches the surface because I omitted a lot of people who are big names in Ukrainian history, such as Volodymyr the Great, Petro Mohyla, Prince Dmytro Baida Vyshnevetsky, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Kotliarevsky, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Khvylovy, Dziga Vertov, Alexander Dovzhenko, Levo Lukyanenko, Vasyl Stus, and Ivan Drach. The good news is that there are places online where you can learn all about Ukrainian history for free.
Coursera offers a free class on Ukraine: History, Culture and Identities, which is offered by the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. It consists of a series of eleven different lessons with each video lecture running from 4-6 minutes, which is easy enough to fit into a busy schedule. Each lesson is accompanied by .pdf documents showing major events in Ukrainian history and a list of recommended books one could read if one wanted to do an even deeper dive into a certain subject matter that is briefly mentioned in the lesson. The video lectures are in English although some of the professors have heavily accented English that could be difficult to understand at times. The good news is that each video lecture is accompanied by a written transcript so you can refer to it if you have a hard time understanding that professor.
You won’t become an expert on the history of Ukraine from this course but you’ll get a general overview of the topic while learning facts like, for example, how 2014 wasn’t the first time that Crimea was annexed by the Russians.
The biggest downside is from the Coursera end. Even though this class does not provide college credit or lead to a certificate or college degree, Coursera still insists on the student taking quizzes and a final exam at the end of the course. Really, Coursera?!? Can’t a person simply listen to a lecture for personal enrichment (with taking notes as an option if the student wants to) without having to take a quiz or exam?
What’s more, Coursera institutes deadlines for finishing each lesson and the course, which is annoying for a class that doesn’t lead to a degree or certificate. Granted, you can reset a deadline if, for whatever reason, you can’t meet the original deadline but why even have deadlines for a class that doesn’t lead to a professional certificate, college credits, or a degree of any kind?
The bottom line is that this class is great for newbies with little knowledge about Ukraine and people with very busy schedules who want to learn more about that country. But having quizzes, exams, and deadlines defeats the whole purpose of having a class where you can learn at your own pace on your own schedule in a low-key, non-stressful way.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/ukraine-history-culture-and-identities/
There is a free course offered on YouTube in conjunction with Yale University called Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. This class consists of a series of 23 lectures on the history of Ukraine given by historian Timothy Snyder with each video lecture lasting around 45-50 minutes. It delves way deeper into Ukrainian history than the Coursera class and it’s definitely for people who can spare more time learning about Ukraine.
Timothy Snyder is a very engaging speaker and I’ve learned new things about Ukraine that I hadn’t known before, such as the fact that the Greeks and Jews were among the earliest documented settlers of what is now Ukraine many centuries ago.
Like the Coursera class, completing this class will not lead to college credits or a professional certificate but YouTube doesn’t require quizzes or exams nor does it have deadlines for completing the class so you can really learn at your own pace on your own schedule without much stress. The only downside is that a series of 23 lectures might be difficult to sit through for someone with a very busy personal and/or professional schedule.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
Which class is better? It really depends on what you want and what your needs are. If you’re a total newbie when it comes to Ukraine or if you’re someone who wants a very basic understanding of Ukrainian history but don’t have much time to listen to Snyder’s lecture series, then the Coursera class is the way to go despite having to put up with those quizzes and final exam. You’ll at least get a basic overview on Ukraine and gain a greater understanding of the roots of the current Russian invasion. On the other hand, if you really want to understand Ukraine on a deeper level, have more spare time, and/or you just prefer to learn without having to deal with deadlines and quizzes, then Timothy Snyder is the way to go.
Or you can take both classes. If you do this, I recommend taking the Coursera class first for a general introductory overview then taking Snyder’s class for a deeper dive into the history of Ukraine.
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