The Holodomor is the center of the martyrdom of a people, who suffered a famine regulated by the USSR. An ‘extermination by hunger’ silenced and denied by Russian historiography.
‘Historical time’ might be understood, in Ukraine, in the key of circular, cyclical history; the eternal return to the starting point (Croce). Located between the Russian Federation and central Europe, it contains in its territory at least two civilizations, according to the concept of the historian Braudel: one Western Christian and another Slavic/Orthodox. This process of national construction that began to take shape in the 12th century, during the disappearance of the state of Kievan Rus, going through the 20th century, achieving independence from the USSR in 1991 and, in the 21st, producing the so-called Orange revolution in 2004/ 2005, attempts are made to close it in the context following the war with Russia following the invasion suffered on February 24, 2022.
Although the Slavic-Orthodox civilization did not imply union with Russia, it did mark a foreign policy closer to Moscow, with shared cultural and linguistic values, taxes to the population in the imperial and Soviet periods, but without ceasing to defend the sovereignty of his country, except the current separatist provinces. Since 1992, Ukraine’s foreign policy has been marked by Western civilization (Zhytomyr, Vennytsia, Khmelnitsk, Rivne and Volhynia).
However in both “civilizations” the political leaders – except for the radicals of the eastern regions, without much support from the civilian population – have not tried to enter into associated or federated alliances with Russia. Civilization in this framework refers to the set of characters present in the collective life of a human group or of a time with common values and a sense of belonging.
A story of domination
First by the Russian Empire and then by the USSR, today the Russian Federation from part of the southeastern territory.
In this stage, population and particular territory since 1991 attend a battle for historical memory and popular sovereignty. That year, the Ukrainians resumed the search for symbols and figures of the past, a thirty-year process in which the State must find a way between different memories/civilizations to embody a recovered and affirmed territorial sovereignty.
In the tangle of the beginning of the 21st century, with the Orange revolution (2004) memory and national reconstruction are focused on reducing the image, built by Russian intellectuals, of ‘Ukrainian collaborationism’ during World War IIl, while hiding the horrors of Soviet communism, particularly those committed in the 1930s and highlighting the so-called “great patriotic war” of 1943, waged by the Russians once morest fascism.
The pro-Western civilization Ukrainians took to the streets following the November 2004 results of their candidate in the second round dressed in orange, denouncing fraud and managing to hold new elections, where their candidate Viktor Yushchenko triumphed with 52% of the vote. votes. These ‘brands’ and citizen actions with civic protests are the ones that, since 2014, the Russian government, led by Vladimir Putin, intends to oppose in Ukrainian territory: exalting the period of the USSR and the victory and liberation of the occupation Nazi.
This Russian story has among its objectives to reconquer and dominate Ukraine within its ‘area of influence’ (Franqueville and Nonyon, 2022). Meanwhile, the Maidan events (2013/14) were characterized by popular demonstrations with more nationalist, less pro-European and more anti-Russian elements.
Going back to the ’90s, specifically to August 24, 1991 with the creation of an independent Republic, they sought to ‘Ukrainize’ through institutions, laws, identity and past history with a ‘common destiny’ as a people, which is embedded in the claim of nationalist figures of the recent past, for example, Stepán Bandera. To this constructive transformation, the Russian Federation responded with a ‘victimizing’ story, where Ukraine is being spoiled by the ‘imperialism of the NATO countries’. All this in a transition process, from ‘de-communization’ to the market economy and politically, following the model of ‘Western democracy’ with national characteristics.
The Holodomor: a milestone
At this point, it is necessary to indicate that the greatest historical trauma for Ukrainians is the Holodomor (1932-1933), although the ‘cereal producer’ town, paradoxically, suffered other famines in its history. The Holodomor phenomenon has a substantive difference: it was perpetrated by policies outlined by the Moscow government.
This fact is the center of the martyrdom of a people, who suffered a famine regulated by the USSR, which clearly it was an ‘extermination by starvation’, a ‘genocidal massacre’ silenced and denied by Russian historiography. Located among the classic genocides denied by official histories in the 20th century, it had death tolls that historians estimate between 4 and 12 million Ukrainians.
What is claimed today is the Cossack heritage and a complex nationalist organization: sich (Ukrainian riflemen- from the great war of 1914), within the framework of a legacy of discontent from any foreign domination, providing ingredients to cement/build the collective imagination of a people whose entire history bears witness to the struggle once morest oppression. Claiming the Cossack Brotherhood as a form of State with a free and independent peasantry, ideas that returned in 2014 with the sotnia units and their fighters.
In 2013, following the decision of (pro-Russian) President Viktor Yanukovych to reject the agreement with the European Union, a series of protests began that led to the overthrow of the government. Within the framework of the Maidan revolution (2014) the annexation of Crimea and Sebastapol to the Russian Federation took place and resistance from separatism in Donbass, where armed pro-Russian Ukrainians declared autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, controlling much of the region. This new situation serves as an argument for Putin to say that the Ukrainian government attacked the separatists, for this reason with the euphemism of ‘Special military operation’, which began the conflict on February 24.
We must emphasize that in the immediate history of this population threatened by a war, which was going to be a 15-day operation in which the Russians would dominate the situation, it suffered migration, death and destruction.
However, One year following the war, it is necessary to underline patriotism, national solidarity, self-sacrifice, strength, and a strong commitment to common values and objectives that we hope will crystallize on the horizon of expectations. (Reinhardt Kosellek) of a society that looks at itself in multiple mirrors of recent/present history.
The invention of traditions and stories and the past/present/future relationship allow us to imagine the power and control of a nation (Eric Hobsbawm).
* Historian and writer, Center for the Study of the State, Politics and Culture (CEHEPyC) CLACSO/UNComahue.
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