As a Ukrainian, I will correct you on this - the word Ukraine does not come from “borderland,” that’s an outdated theory that never made much sense since the word Ukraine was first mentioned in a text from 1187 during the time of the Kyivan Rus, so what was it a “borderland” of? Certanly not of Muskovy, which didn’t yet exist!
In Ukrainian “Krajina” means “country” and “u” means “in” or “into,” so the simplest interpretation is that U-krajina means “in-country” or middle country (a bit like China is Zhong-guo, Middle Country). Another version of the word “Ukraina” is “Vkrajina” (our national poet Shevchenko often used this version interchangably with “Ukraina”) and that once again points to this theory since “U” and “V” are also interchangeable in Ukranian language, both meaning “in” or “into.” Russian word “Okraina” (“borderland,” “periphery”) is an homonym.
And since we’re talking about history, it’s impossible to understand Russia and her motivations without mentioning Genghis Khan and the Tatar-Mongol Yoke over Rus’ that lasted from 1237 until around 1480. It’s this catastrophic invasion from the East that propelled Mongol-friendly Moscow to dominance over much older and wealthier Kyivan Rus’ cities. As the vast Mongol empire gradually broke up, their Muscovite vassals largely inherited their political system and, most importantly for current events, their “expansionist gene” - long after ethnic Mongols themselves put the idea of subjugating the world through sheer violence to rest.
The idea of Russia as a highly centralized state primarily designed to extract and efficiently export natural resources - be it animal skins, timber, natural gas or oil - for the benefit of a small ruling elite and their ever-expanding security apparatus while most of its own population remains in crippling poverty and servitude, also comes from long ago and contrasts to Ukrainian/Kyivan Rus’ identity as agrarians, petty feudals and traders.
I wish more Westerners had access to works of Russian historians such as Valeriya Novodvorskaya who examined the questions of Russian identity in detail (and who also saw Putin for what he was very early on and presciently predicted the current war) - she identified several “strains” of Russian identity, among which the “Dikoe Pole” (wild steppe, the wilderness - euphemism for the militaristic, endlessly expansionist Tatar-Mongol “gene”) was a clear majority + several important minority strains including the “Novgorod type” - descendants of the traders of Novgorod and other Northern cities founded along the Viking trade routes who valued personal freedom, democracy and commerce. According to Novodvorskaya, many of these Russians with minority views have chosen or were forced to emigrate over centuries of oppression, which is why we see a lot of very active, well-educated and self-sufficient Russians abroad in contrast to the very docile and zombiefied majority of population inside the country.
Alex good that you brought up the Tatar yoke which indeed does influence Russian political views today, particularly the skill of extracting value from the hinterlands and sending it to Moscow. During my many years in Moscow I became acquainted with a major general in the custom service who told me the following indicative anecdote : One innovation of the Tartars was to collect taxes at each town’s market, and indicate that the taxes are paid by the affixing of a mark known as a “tamga” to the taxed goods. To affix the mark was the verb tamzhit and the person fixing the mark, the tax collector, was the tamozhnik, which, as my friend proudly explained, is the name of the Russian custom service officers to this very day.
Oh yes, even the word Kremlin is of Turkic origin as well as lots of other key Russian words such as money («деньги») that comes from the name of the Mongolian currency. In contrast, Ukrainian word for money is Slavic in origin, sharing roots with Polish and other Eastern European languages.
Anything to do with taxation, postal service, military and state power will likely have lots of Mongolian/Turkic words. IMO “Russians” need to embrace their history as true heirs of the Golden Horde - no great shame in that - and deal with that legacy, instead of trying to prove their “Slavic-ness” by appropriating the culture and history of their neighbors.
Weren't some other oddities of the Russian language engineered to give it more imperial "gravitas"?
One example is the replacement of traditional Slavic month names with Latin-derived ones that Westerners would find familiar: for example "February" is «февраль» in Russian but «Лютий» in Ukrainian.
Another example would be the use of words derived from Old Church Slavonic, which is more of a South Slavic than an East Slavic language. "Victory" in Russian is «победа», which is also found in South Slavic languages arcing from Croatian thru Serbian to Bulgarian, but is different from the authentically East Slavic word: Ukrainian «перемога» or Belarusian «перамога».
Your mention of wild steppes made me think more of the Cossacks: the Slavic horsemen who (thanks to firearms) were able to beat the Tatar-Mongols at their own game, and who became a libertarian role model for Ukrainians, just as Western frontiersmen became the American libertarian role model.
And to what extent was Muscovite Russian tyranny a result of geography that limited its ability to trade with the outside world? If you follow the river Moskva (after which the city itself is named) downstream you never reach the open ocean: instead you reach the river Oka at Kolomna, then the river Volga at Nizhniy Novgorod, ultimately dead-ending in the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan. OK for trading with Iran (and by extension the rest of the Middle East) but not for trading with the rest of the world.
The U/V interchangeabiity in some Ukrainian contexts reminds me of how in Spanish "vuestra merced" (your mercy) contracted into "usted", which became the formal word for "you".
The other noteworthy feature of Putin's rhetoric is that it is all directed to the US, with the idea that he can either cut a deal with the US over the heads of Ukraine and the rest of Europe, or else get the US to give up on NATO at which point Russia (currently the world's second military power, on traditional measures) would be in a position to dominate Europe.
But this no longer looks realistic. Even supposing a truce in which Russia holds on to its current gains in Ukraine, its frontline army has been destroyed, and the seemingly bottomless stockpile of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and so on is reaching its limits. And Europe, as always, is moving slowly but (as not always) steadily towards a semi-unified military structure that doesn't depend on the US. The frontline states (Poland, Ukraine, plus the Baltics) will soon have more (and much more modern) tanks than Russia, and, in a few years, Europe will be outproducing Russia across the board in military hardware.
Tucker Carlson was an obvious target and a useful idiot exactly because the interview can be used to Putin’s advantage on multiple fronts.
1. The interview itself is going to stoke partisan divisions that are already present in an election year
2. Putin could free the WSJ reporter to lend credence to Tucker’s and the right’s stance on Russian willingness to negotiate
3. That would help Trump in the election - Biden could be seen as having pushed Zelensky into an unnecessary war (Ben Shapiro recently made this exact argument in a debate with Destiny hosted by Lex Friedman).
Anybody that’s read Anne Applebaum or Fiona Hill knows that Putin is not to be trusted and that everything telegraphed publicly is done for a reason. There’s no honesty in his public statements - it’s all designed to serve another purpose/goal. Assume that what he says he’s going to do is accurate and should thus be taken seriously but trust absolutely nothing about how or why it might come to be.
Ultimately that’s why this interview was doomed from the start. By giving him another stage you’re just serving his own ends - and in this case that specifically pretends an expansion of internal divisions in the US as it relates to foreign policy and sovereignty of European states.
Should the war end today, Russia and Putin are in no condition to wage another war. Even if all of the military equipment were replaced, the morale of the country and the decimated army and navy will not be in a position for another war for at least another generation, given the loss of soldiers. Hence Putin knows he has to play the nuclear option.
Putin has learned to find new soldiers among ethnic minorities and immigrants to Russia from Central Asian countries. These are people nobody cares about. There is also evidence that conscripts, who aren't supposed to be used in combat situations, are being bullied and pressured into signing military contracts. Because Putin has found these manpower resources, he is much less vulnerable to push back from the Russian mainstream.
As the Romans learned, this is a strategy that has risks of its own. An army made of non-Russians might have its own ideas about Russkiy Mir, and might express those ideas by changing emperors.
The danger comes when the officer corps is foreign born. That's when the Romans were threatened by their own barbarian legions. At this point, every single Russian officer is in fact Russian. And that is one of the many reasons that they are willing to see their non-Russian troops die in such large numbers.
Ukrainians likely detest Russia because of the Holodomor of the 1930s in which Russia or should I cover it up and call it the USSR starved million in Ukraine. The Nazis liked the idea so much they followed up with the Hunger Plan no more than 10 years later. Of course the Nazis starved lots of Poles too.
I strongly recommend Timothy Snyder's lectures at Yale on Ukraine's history. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&t=18s My link is only the first lecture, it will go from about Vikings up to at least the fall of the USSR. He also has an excellent book titled "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania". His is a magnificent riposte to the evil Putin and the fatuous Mersheimer.
You may not take this as a compliment Noah, but I like it better when you write about history, like this, rather than economics. This is very informative and clear!! 🙂👍🏼
I’ve only listened to one episode of Econ 102, but it was basically just Noah talking about the history of Japan’s economy/development. Very enjoyable listen, felt like I learned a lot
Putin isn't the first Russian leader to be fixated on Ukraine's 1654 request for Russian help against Poland. Khrushchev also viewed this as the moment that Ukraine chose to join its fate with Russia on a permanent basis, resulting in a gigantic Moscow-sponsored tercentennial celebration in 1954. What Putin and Khrushchev ignored was Ukraine's many subsequent attempts to escape the Russian embrace.
Putin alluded to Vladimir Lenin's irrational decision to allow Soviet republics to secede from the Soviet Union. As an anti-imperialist, Lenin wanted to contrast a voluntary Soviet Union to the coercion of the British Empire. But whereas each Soviet republic had a right to secede, no one was ever allowed to seriously consider it.
Ironically, the breakup of the Soviet Union came when Yeltsin called for Russia itself to secede. This quickly led to the secession of Ukraine in 1991. Since approximately 90% of the population voted to secede, it appears a few Ukrainian minds had changed since 1653.
As a final irony, Putin stressed how cruelly the Poles treated the Ukrainians. Nowadays, most Ukrainians remember better the famines caused by ferocious Soviet efforts to extract grain from unwilling small farmers of Ukraine. There was no capitalistic mechanism by which grain could travel 600-800 miles north to feed Moscow and Leningrad, so Moscow simply sent out soldiers to gather whatever they could find and pay a token price for it.
The Soviets justified this by their belief that farmers always had more grain hidden than could ever be found. This was not correct— Ukrainians ended up starving by the millions, which led many of them to look on the invading Nazis as liberators.
Excellent post, however I would challenge your last sentence - in reality there were fewer Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis than the Russians who collaborated. The largest of the Russian Nazi-allied forces, General Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army had 50,000+ troops, the largest Ukrainian Nazi-allied force SS division Galicia had less than 12,000.
In my own family we talked about the suffering during the 1933 Soviet-made famine (my grandmother remembered the time when there were no dogs or cats left in her Eastern Ukrainian village - all were eaten; and how the soldiers encircled the village so no one could escape) - yet my great-grandfather enlisted into the Soviet Army in 1942 and perished in the war. As far as I know, almost all collaboration with the Nazis on the Ukrainian side came from the Western regions that were annexed from Poland and Romania in 1939 - naturally people in those territories had little affinity for Soviet Russia and some initially welcomed Hitler. Soon, however, they started fighting both against the Germans and the Soviets.
As usual with Putin, the accusation of collaboration with the Nazis is just a way to delegetimize the idea of Ukrainian nationalism, which to the likes to Putin is a much greater sin.
Isn't the whole "Nazi Ukraine" trope in Russian propaganda more to do with how post-Maidan Ukraine looked increasingly to its OUN and UPA heritage in building its national identity: for example the "Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!" call-and-response that is now known across the world, or the adoption of a modified OUN anthem as the official anthem of the Ukrainian armed forces?
I know that there were many people in Russia and neighboring countries who hope that the Nazis would free them from Soviet domination. Most of them became disillusioned I believe.
Building on your point about the origins of the break up of the Soviet Union, my reading of history indicates that Yeltsin, Kuchma, Shushkevitch, and Shevardnadze each realized that only one of them might become general secretary of the CPSU to succeed the rapidly weakening Gorbachev, but by seceding they could each become their own heads of state. After the failed coup in August 1991, the consequences of independence declarations were shown to be nonexistent when Shushkevich created the Republic of Belarus, and wasn’t *ahem* retired by the USSR special services. US Secretary of State James Baker set them up for diplomatic recognition in his September 1991 communication, which encouraged them to set up the Commonwealth of independent states, and the changing of the flags at the Kremlin on December 25, 1991.
Weren't both the "gifting" of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR and the renaming to "Khmelnytskyy" (after the Cossack hetman who signed the treaty with Russia) of the Ukrainian city previously known as "Proskuriv" connected with that tercentennial celebration in 1954 which you spoke of?
Also, Khrushchev* himself was born in a small village very close to the current (de jure) Ukrainian border near Donbas. In fact, his father already worked there in industrial jobs in Yuzovka (modern Donetsk), along with being a union organizer. As a teen, Nikita Sergeyevich started working there, too.
[*] Hate this transliteration so much , by the way. The Russian 'щ' is a bitch anyway, but why not at least "Khrushchov", a least, for the correct vowel. Or even better, Khrushchóv, marking the stressed syllable, which is very difficult without some grasp of the language. And I understand it'd have to be different for Ukrainian, but "kh" for the coarse Russian 'h' sound (х), think the Spanish 'j', is a bit unnecessary and stupid, if it ends up pronounced as an aspirated *k*, just like in English anyway. For reference, in my Northern European country, the official recommendation would be "Hruštšov" (although our computer keyboards don't have an easy combo for the š and ž characters needed, so you end up with "sh" and "zh" or just "s" and "z" sometimes 🤦🏻♂️).
Yes. I decided to leave some detail out. Actually, the dominant ethnic group of Crimea prior to Russian conquest in the 18th century were the Tartars—they have never felt connected to either Russia or Ukraine.
Except for Luhansk Oblast, Russian-occupied Ukraine roughly corresponds to the former Khanate of Crimea, so why do different areas within it have such different demographics?
Crimea proper is majority ethnic-Russian with Ukrainian and Tatar minorities, Donetsk (like Luhansk) is majority ethnic-Ukrainian but with a significant ethnic-Russian minority, while Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are overwhelmingly ethnic-Ukrainian.
Most of these population shifts occurred during the Stalinist era. This was when the great mining and steel manufacturing was developed in the Donbass with a labor force largely made up of immigrant ethnic Russians. Nikita Khrushchev was born to one of these immigrant Russian couples.
The parts of eastern Ukraine that were agricultural retained their native Ukrainian population.
The warlike Tatars of Crimea were deported from Crimea during the Stalinist era to ensure that this incredibly strategic peninsula had a more docile and reliable population. Sebastopol in Crimea was the home port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
No, the industries of the Donbas were developed in the Tsarist era, and initially by British industrialists: Luhansk was founded in 1795 by the cannon-maker Charles Gascoigne (who also introduced coke-based metallurgy to the Russian Empire for the first time), while Donetsk was originally named "Yuzovka" after the Welsh businessman John Hughes, who had the city built during the 1870s.
The industries of the Donbas were built on a capitalist basis (with easy trading access via the Sea of Azov) while those built from scratch by the communist regime tended to be located deep inside Russia (such as Chelyabinsk in the Urals, or the Kuzbass in western Siberia) in order to be out of reach of any plausible enemy attack.
As for Crimea, it actually became majority ethnic-Russian about the turn of the 20th century (presumably due to Russian immigration and perhaps Tatar emigration to the Ottoman Empire), although you're right that the remaining Tatar population was entirely deported by Stalin in 1944, on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Nazis.
If you knew so much about all of this why asked me? I was giving you a simplified answer for a person whom I assumed had no prior information.
All the czarist trends were continued and amplified by Stalin. If you do some more research, you will realize that the Donbass was further developed during the Stalinist era. You are right that Stalin preferred to locate new areas of production in out of the way places. One point I I did not include in my original answer was the fact that the Tartars ruled the region, but they were by no means a dominant population in most of it.
I will remember you as a guy who plays "gotcha." From now on, I will answer with the following: "Please let me know what you think I need to know about this."
As some one ho lived and worked in Ukraine, speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, and who is familiar with the how Russia and Ukraine have intersected through history, I think you are underestimating the extent to how much this is actually about Ukraine and Russia's ongoing unwillingness to acknowledge Ukrainian national identity. An uncountable number of Russians have told me that Ukraine was not a real country, and there is no such language as Ukrainian long before the invasion. They scoff at the notion. The amount of effort put into suppressing Ukrainian nationalism in both imperial Russia and the Soviet Union was enormous. And after Ukrainian threw off Polish rule in the 1600's they did not seek to become part of Russia, but to ally with Russia to keep from being reabsorbed by Poland. It did not work out as they hoped.
Yup, can confirm your observation. Somehow, many Russians view Ukrainian national identity as a challenge to their own sense of national identity. For the imperialist Russians, it’s a zero-sum game.
Is it not more that Russians have an imperial identity (as formed by their national poet Aleksandr Pushkin) while the Ukrainians have an anti-imperial identity (as formed by _their_ national poet Taras Shevchenko)?
Well, it's not that like those ways to define identity couldn't be complementary or interchangeable particularly in contexts like this one and especially in the early, formative phase.
The current war seems like a continuation of the ethnic conflicts which existed before the USSR but resumed after its breakup -- Yugoslavia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, etc. -- in the form of different color revolutions. Of course, Ukraine is fighting to preserve their identity and autonomy; Russia seeks to enforce their subservient status. These ethnic and national identities are powerful motivators, indeed. Americans have no memory of this type of intensity since 1861.
Yes, I read it and it's excellent. I'd add another name to that bunch of nutjobs: Ivan Ilyin - full of all that mystical goop like the tsar is in person communion with each Russian soul. Again, Timothy Snyder is excellent on the topic.
“ Ethnic imperialism is exactly what we’re facing in Russia right now. Putin doesn’t want Ukraine’s wheat farms. Nor is he motivated by some world-conquering ideology. He simply wants Russia to rule over all the places he views as being within its historic and linguistic sphere of influence.”
=================
Beg to differ here. Ethnic imperialism doesn’t explain Russia’s involvement in Syria, Venezuela, several African countries, strategic partnership with North Korea and Iran and attempts to influence elections in the US and Europe. Do you think they go to all this trouble just for sake of capturing Ukraine?
I think Russia fully fits the bill of an empire with global ambitions fueled by “an insane ideology.” There is an ethnic component, sure, but it’s only part of it.
Underestimating Poland has historically been a mistake. It manages to come up with great individuals at turning points in history. Marian Adam Rejewski, a Polish mathematician, figured out how the Nazi’s enigma machine worked and built an enigma model for the Allied Forces. A great labor leader, combined with an immensely popular Polish Pope who found common ground with William Casey, director of the CIA who attend a Catholic Mass every morning, turned the tide against Russia. And where did the most young, educated Russians (2 million) choose to flee from Putin: Poland. Imagine the technical an economic advances Poland will make with a generation of Russia’s best and brightest. The irony is rich.
Very interesting, and I agree with the main thrust of it. I think Putin's next aims, if he were to succeed in Ukraine or consolidate his gains and reconstitute his forces, would be Moldova, because it's small and would let him place further pressure on Ukraine, and Estonia, because a NATO failure to either answer the Article 5 call or successfully retake a NATO country after a fait accompli invasion might de facto break the alliance.
North Korea's regime probably benefits largely from the status quo. Iran might be playing a long game and hoping to expand into a strategic vacuum as the West withdraws and possibly if KSA becomes unstable. But Russia and China both seem to have a sense of urgency to achieve strategic wins in the lifetimes of their respective aging leaders.
Putin seems to me entirely opportunistic regarding which ex-Soviet SSR's or Warsaw Pact members he'd move against militarily. And to what degree. Against Georgia in 2008 he only took about a third of their country--despite shattering their military. He goes for the weak. Poland--with NATO behind it--is most definitely not weak.
Noah's premise that Putin definitely wants to destroy free-market capitalist neighbors and the democratic, rules-based governing structures that enable their prosperity, is spot on. Because democracy represents a direct threat to him personally.
That's a little unfair. Law and Justice share Putin's anti-democratic and anti-liberal views, but they want a Polish/Catholic version, not a Russian/Orthodox version. With limited exceptions they have backed Ukraine. Still, good to see them out of power.
As well as your suggestion, I guess there would be some people with a Russian ethnic background, either longstanding or dating from the Cold War. But too few to matter.
True for Poland. But the same story is playing out, albeit on a smaller scale, between Romania and Russia.
Russia has invaded the lands that became modern Romania multiple times since at least the mid-eighteenth century. More recently, the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of 1940 transferred Bessarabia and North Bukovina to the Soviet Union. Romania went to war in 1941 in large part to get them back -- and failed. Neither the Romanians nor the Russians have forgotten.
The majority of Moldovans would like to reunite with Romania, according to various surveys. The problem is that Russia has made it abundantly clear that it would not stand for such a measure. As well, there is a very vocal Russian minority in Moldova, settled there by the old Soviet Union, who disrupts efforts at a united front on this issue.
Currently the Russians are in no position to do anything about it (other than hold onto Transnistria) any more than they could stop Sweden and Finland from joining NATO. The current government is pro-NATO and if a referendum on unification passed, the Russians would be at a loss to explain why their referendums in the occupied Ukrainian oblasts were legitimate but one in unoccupied Moldova was not
Ironically a song (Kauan on kärsitty) written to celebrate the Finnish volunteer contribution to that war was later repurposed for use by the Finnish White Army during Finland's 1918 war of independence.
I was hoping someone would watch the interview and provide serious commentary. Tom Nichols failed me in that regard. Very lucid and informative, Noah. Thanks!
As a Ukrainian, I will correct you on this - the word Ukraine does not come from “borderland,” that’s an outdated theory that never made much sense since the word Ukraine was first mentioned in a text from 1187 during the time of the Kyivan Rus, so what was it a “borderland” of? Certanly not of Muskovy, which didn’t yet exist!
In Ukrainian “Krajina” means “country” and “u” means “in” or “into,” so the simplest interpretation is that U-krajina means “in-country” or middle country (a bit like China is Zhong-guo, Middle Country). Another version of the word “Ukraina” is “Vkrajina” (our national poet Shevchenko often used this version interchangably with “Ukraina”) and that once again points to this theory since “U” and “V” are also interchangeable in Ukranian language, both meaning “in” or “into.” Russian word “Okraina” (“borderland,” “periphery”) is an homonym.
And since we’re talking about history, it’s impossible to understand Russia and her motivations without mentioning Genghis Khan and the Tatar-Mongol Yoke over Rus’ that lasted from 1237 until around 1480. It’s this catastrophic invasion from the East that propelled Mongol-friendly Moscow to dominance over much older and wealthier Kyivan Rus’ cities. As the vast Mongol empire gradually broke up, their Muscovite vassals largely inherited their political system and, most importantly for current events, their “expansionist gene” - long after ethnic Mongols themselves put the idea of subjugating the world through sheer violence to rest.
The idea of Russia as a highly centralized state primarily designed to extract and efficiently export natural resources - be it animal skins, timber, natural gas or oil - for the benefit of a small ruling elite and their ever-expanding security apparatus while most of its own population remains in crippling poverty and servitude, also comes from long ago and contrasts to Ukrainian/Kyivan Rus’ identity as agrarians, petty feudals and traders.
I wish more Westerners had access to works of Russian historians such as Valeriya Novodvorskaya who examined the questions of Russian identity in detail (and who also saw Putin for what he was very early on and presciently predicted the current war) - she identified several “strains” of Russian identity, among which the “Dikoe Pole” (wild steppe, the wilderness - euphemism for the militaristic, endlessly expansionist Tatar-Mongol “gene”) was a clear majority + several important minority strains including the “Novgorod type” - descendants of the traders of Novgorod and other Northern cities founded along the Viking trade routes who valued personal freedom, democracy and commerce. According to Novodvorskaya, many of these Russians with minority views have chosen or were forced to emigrate over centuries of oppression, which is why we see a lot of very active, well-educated and self-sufficient Russians abroad in contrast to the very docile and zombiefied majority of population inside the country.
Alex good that you brought up the Tatar yoke which indeed does influence Russian political views today, particularly the skill of extracting value from the hinterlands and sending it to Moscow. During my many years in Moscow I became acquainted with a major general in the custom service who told me the following indicative anecdote : One innovation of the Tartars was to collect taxes at each town’s market, and indicate that the taxes are paid by the affixing of a mark known as a “tamga” to the taxed goods. To affix the mark was the verb tamzhit and the person fixing the mark, the tax collector, was the tamozhnik, which, as my friend proudly explained, is the name of the Russian custom service officers to this very day.
Oh yes, even the word Kremlin is of Turkic origin as well as lots of other key Russian words such as money («деньги») that comes from the name of the Mongolian currency. In contrast, Ukrainian word for money is Slavic in origin, sharing roots with Polish and other Eastern European languages.
Anything to do with taxation, postal service, military and state power will likely have lots of Mongolian/Turkic words. IMO “Russians” need to embrace their history as true heirs of the Golden Horde - no great shame in that - and deal with that legacy, instead of trying to prove their “Slavic-ness” by appropriating the culture and history of their neighbors.
Weren't some other oddities of the Russian language engineered to give it more imperial "gravitas"?
One example is the replacement of traditional Slavic month names with Latin-derived ones that Westerners would find familiar: for example "February" is «февраль» in Russian but «Лютий» in Ukrainian.
Another example would be the use of words derived from Old Church Slavonic, which is more of a South Slavic than an East Slavic language. "Victory" in Russian is «победа», which is also found in South Slavic languages arcing from Croatian thru Serbian to Bulgarian, but is different from the authentically East Slavic word: Ukrainian «перемога» or Belarusian «перамога».
Right on cue, former President of Mongolia chimes in:
https://twitter.com/elbegdorj/status/1756818696700657935
Your mention of wild steppes made me think more of the Cossacks: the Slavic horsemen who (thanks to firearms) were able to beat the Tatar-Mongols at their own game, and who became a libertarian role model for Ukrainians, just as Western frontiersmen became the American libertarian role model.
And to what extent was Muscovite Russian tyranny a result of geography that limited its ability to trade with the outside world? If you follow the river Moskva (after which the city itself is named) downstream you never reach the open ocean: instead you reach the river Oka at Kolomna, then the river Volga at Nizhniy Novgorod, ultimately dead-ending in the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan. OK for trading with Iran (and by extension the rest of the Middle East) but not for trading with the rest of the world.
The U/V interchangeabiity in some Ukrainian contexts reminds me of how in Spanish "vuestra merced" (your mercy) contracted into "usted", which became the formal word for "you".
I believe Noah was quoting Putin here, but not fully sure. It’s definitely a quote from somewhere.
The other noteworthy feature of Putin's rhetoric is that it is all directed to the US, with the idea that he can either cut a deal with the US over the heads of Ukraine and the rest of Europe, or else get the US to give up on NATO at which point Russia (currently the world's second military power, on traditional measures) would be in a position to dominate Europe.
But this no longer looks realistic. Even supposing a truce in which Russia holds on to its current gains in Ukraine, its frontline army has been destroyed, and the seemingly bottomless stockpile of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and so on is reaching its limits. And Europe, as always, is moving slowly but (as not always) steadily towards a semi-unified military structure that doesn't depend on the US. The frontline states (Poland, Ukraine, plus the Baltics) will soon have more (and much more modern) tanks than Russia, and, in a few years, Europe will be outproducing Russia across the board in military hardware.
Tucker Carlson was an obvious target and a useful idiot exactly because the interview can be used to Putin’s advantage on multiple fronts.
1. The interview itself is going to stoke partisan divisions that are already present in an election year
2. Putin could free the WSJ reporter to lend credence to Tucker’s and the right’s stance on Russian willingness to negotiate
3. That would help Trump in the election - Biden could be seen as having pushed Zelensky into an unnecessary war (Ben Shapiro recently made this exact argument in a debate with Destiny hosted by Lex Friedman).
Anybody that’s read Anne Applebaum or Fiona Hill knows that Putin is not to be trusted and that everything telegraphed publicly is done for a reason. There’s no honesty in his public statements - it’s all designed to serve another purpose/goal. Assume that what he says he’s going to do is accurate and should thus be taken seriously but trust absolutely nothing about how or why it might come to be.
Ultimately that’s why this interview was doomed from the start. By giving him another stage you’re just serving his own ends - and in this case that specifically pretends an expansion of internal divisions in the US as it relates to foreign policy and sovereignty of European states.
“nt Russia (currently the world's second military power, on traditional measures)”
Russia couldn’t defeat Ukraine so whatever Ukraine’s ranking before the war Russia is one below that.
By that logic the Taliban (since 2021) is a stronger military power than the United States.
We invaded and occupied Afghanistan. Russia tried to invade and occupy Ukraine and failed. M
It would be like if in 2003 we tried to invade Iraq and our tanks rolled toward Baghdad only to have them destroyed and our forces routed.
Good point: the Russian _invasion_ of Ukraine failed, while it was the American _occupation_ of Afghanistan which failed.
Most Western commentators before Feb 22 expected another Afghanistan: a successful assault on Kiev, followed by a protracted war of occupation.
Should the war end today, Russia and Putin are in no condition to wage another war. Even if all of the military equipment were replaced, the morale of the country and the decimated army and navy will not be in a position for another war for at least another generation, given the loss of soldiers. Hence Putin knows he has to play the nuclear option.
Putin has learned to find new soldiers among ethnic minorities and immigrants to Russia from Central Asian countries. These are people nobody cares about. There is also evidence that conscripts, who aren't supposed to be used in combat situations, are being bullied and pressured into signing military contracts. Because Putin has found these manpower resources, he is much less vulnerable to push back from the Russian mainstream.
As the Romans learned, this is a strategy that has risks of its own. An army made of non-Russians might have its own ideas about Russkiy Mir, and might express those ideas by changing emperors.
The danger comes when the officer corps is foreign born. That's when the Romans were threatened by their own barbarian legions. At this point, every single Russian officer is in fact Russian. And that is one of the many reasons that they are willing to see their non-Russian troops die in such large numbers.
Ukrainians likely detest Russia because of the Holodomor of the 1930s in which Russia or should I cover it up and call it the USSR starved million in Ukraine. The Nazis liked the idea so much they followed up with the Hunger Plan no more than 10 years later. Of course the Nazis starved lots of Poles too.
I strongly recommend Timothy Snyder's lectures at Yale on Ukraine's history. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&t=18s My link is only the first lecture, it will go from about Vikings up to at least the fall of the USSR. He also has an excellent book titled "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania". His is a magnificent riposte to the evil Putin and the fatuous Mersheimer.
You may not take this as a compliment Noah, but I like it better when you write about history, like this, rather than economics. This is very informative and clear!! 🙂👍🏼
I’ve only listened to one episode of Econ 102, but it was basically just Noah talking about the history of Japan’s economy/development. Very enjoyable listen, felt like I learned a lot
Putin isn't the first Russian leader to be fixated on Ukraine's 1654 request for Russian help against Poland. Khrushchev also viewed this as the moment that Ukraine chose to join its fate with Russia on a permanent basis, resulting in a gigantic Moscow-sponsored tercentennial celebration in 1954. What Putin and Khrushchev ignored was Ukraine's many subsequent attempts to escape the Russian embrace.
Putin alluded to Vladimir Lenin's irrational decision to allow Soviet republics to secede from the Soviet Union. As an anti-imperialist, Lenin wanted to contrast a voluntary Soviet Union to the coercion of the British Empire. But whereas each Soviet republic had a right to secede, no one was ever allowed to seriously consider it.
Ironically, the breakup of the Soviet Union came when Yeltsin called for Russia itself to secede. This quickly led to the secession of Ukraine in 1991. Since approximately 90% of the population voted to secede, it appears a few Ukrainian minds had changed since 1653.
As a final irony, Putin stressed how cruelly the Poles treated the Ukrainians. Nowadays, most Ukrainians remember better the famines caused by ferocious Soviet efforts to extract grain from unwilling small farmers of Ukraine. There was no capitalistic mechanism by which grain could travel 600-800 miles north to feed Moscow and Leningrad, so Moscow simply sent out soldiers to gather whatever they could find and pay a token price for it.
The Soviets justified this by their belief that farmers always had more grain hidden than could ever be found. This was not correct— Ukrainians ended up starving by the millions, which led many of them to look on the invading Nazis as liberators.
Excellent post, however I would challenge your last sentence - in reality there were fewer Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis than the Russians who collaborated. The largest of the Russian Nazi-allied forces, General Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army had 50,000+ troops, the largest Ukrainian Nazi-allied force SS division Galicia had less than 12,000.
In my own family we talked about the suffering during the 1933 Soviet-made famine (my grandmother remembered the time when there were no dogs or cats left in her Eastern Ukrainian village - all were eaten; and how the soldiers encircled the village so no one could escape) - yet my great-grandfather enlisted into the Soviet Army in 1942 and perished in the war. As far as I know, almost all collaboration with the Nazis on the Ukrainian side came from the Western regions that were annexed from Poland and Romania in 1939 - naturally people in those territories had little affinity for Soviet Russia and some initially welcomed Hitler. Soon, however, they started fighting both against the Germans and the Soviets.
As usual with Putin, the accusation of collaboration with the Nazis is just a way to delegetimize the idea of Ukrainian nationalism, which to the likes to Putin is a much greater sin.
Isn't the whole "Nazi Ukraine" trope in Russian propaganda more to do with how post-Maidan Ukraine looked increasingly to its OUN and UPA heritage in building its national identity: for example the "Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!" call-and-response that is now known across the world, or the adoption of a modified OUN anthem as the official anthem of the Ukrainian armed forces?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdANpB9PnY
I know that there were many people in Russia and neighboring countries who hope that the Nazis would free them from Soviet domination. Most of them became disillusioned I believe.
Building on your point about the origins of the break up of the Soviet Union, my reading of history indicates that Yeltsin, Kuchma, Shushkevitch, and Shevardnadze each realized that only one of them might become general secretary of the CPSU to succeed the rapidly weakening Gorbachev, but by seceding they could each become their own heads of state. After the failed coup in August 1991, the consequences of independence declarations were shown to be nonexistent when Shushkevich created the Republic of Belarus, and wasn’t *ahem* retired by the USSR special services. US Secretary of State James Baker set them up for diplomatic recognition in his September 1991 communication, which encouraged them to set up the Commonwealth of independent states, and the changing of the flags at the Kremlin on December 25, 1991.
Weren't both the "gifting" of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR and the renaming to "Khmelnytskyy" (after the Cossack hetman who signed the treaty with Russia) of the Ukrainian city previously known as "Proskuriv" connected with that tercentennial celebration in 1954 which you spoke of?
Also, Khrushchev* himself was born in a small village very close to the current (de jure) Ukrainian border near Donbas. In fact, his father already worked there in industrial jobs in Yuzovka (modern Donetsk), along with being a union organizer. As a teen, Nikita Sergeyevich started working there, too.
[*] Hate this transliteration so much , by the way. The Russian 'щ' is a bitch anyway, but why not at least "Khrushchov", a least, for the correct vowel. Or even better, Khrushchóv, marking the stressed syllable, which is very difficult without some grasp of the language. And I understand it'd have to be different for Ukrainian, but "kh" for the coarse Russian 'h' sound (х), think the Spanish 'j', is a bit unnecessary and stupid, if it ends up pronounced as an aspirated *k*, just like in English anyway. For reference, in my Northern European country, the official recommendation would be "Hruštšov" (although our computer keyboards don't have an easy combo for the š and ž characters needed, so you end up with "sh" and "zh" or just "s" and "z" sometimes 🤦🏻♂️).
Yes. I decided to leave some detail out. Actually, the dominant ethnic group of Crimea prior to Russian conquest in the 18th century were the Tartars—they have never felt connected to either Russia or Ukraine.
Except for Luhansk Oblast, Russian-occupied Ukraine roughly corresponds to the former Khanate of Crimea, so why do different areas within it have such different demographics?
Crimea proper is majority ethnic-Russian with Ukrainian and Tatar minorities, Donetsk (like Luhansk) is majority ethnic-Ukrainian but with a significant ethnic-Russian minority, while Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are overwhelmingly ethnic-Ukrainian.
Most of these population shifts occurred during the Stalinist era. This was when the great mining and steel manufacturing was developed in the Donbass with a labor force largely made up of immigrant ethnic Russians. Nikita Khrushchev was born to one of these immigrant Russian couples.
The parts of eastern Ukraine that were agricultural retained their native Ukrainian population.
The warlike Tatars of Crimea were deported from Crimea during the Stalinist era to ensure that this incredibly strategic peninsula had a more docile and reliable population. Sebastopol in Crimea was the home port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
No, the industries of the Donbas were developed in the Tsarist era, and initially by British industrialists: Luhansk was founded in 1795 by the cannon-maker Charles Gascoigne (who also introduced coke-based metallurgy to the Russian Empire for the first time), while Donetsk was originally named "Yuzovka" after the Welsh businessman John Hughes, who had the city built during the 1870s.
The industries of the Donbas were built on a capitalist basis (with easy trading access via the Sea of Azov) while those built from scratch by the communist regime tended to be located deep inside Russia (such as Chelyabinsk in the Urals, or the Kuzbass in western Siberia) in order to be out of reach of any plausible enemy attack.
As for Crimea, it actually became majority ethnic-Russian about the turn of the 20th century (presumably due to Russian immigration and perhaps Tatar emigration to the Ottoman Empire), although you're right that the remaining Tatar population was entirely deported by Stalin in 1944, on the pretext that they had collaborated with the Nazis.
If you knew so much about all of this why asked me? I was giving you a simplified answer for a person whom I assumed had no prior information.
All the czarist trends were continued and amplified by Stalin. If you do some more research, you will realize that the Donbass was further developed during the Stalinist era. You are right that Stalin preferred to locate new areas of production in out of the way places. One point I I did not include in my original answer was the fact that the Tartars ruled the region, but they were by no means a dominant population in most of it.
I will remember you as a guy who plays "gotcha." From now on, I will answer with the following: "Please let me know what you think I need to know about this."
As some one ho lived and worked in Ukraine, speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, and who is familiar with the how Russia and Ukraine have intersected through history, I think you are underestimating the extent to how much this is actually about Ukraine and Russia's ongoing unwillingness to acknowledge Ukrainian national identity. An uncountable number of Russians have told me that Ukraine was not a real country, and there is no such language as Ukrainian long before the invasion. They scoff at the notion. The amount of effort put into suppressing Ukrainian nationalism in both imperial Russia and the Soviet Union was enormous. And after Ukrainian threw off Polish rule in the 1600's they did not seek to become part of Russia, but to ally with Russia to keep from being reabsorbed by Poland. It did not work out as they hoped.
Yup, can confirm your observation. Somehow, many Russians view Ukrainian national identity as a challenge to their own sense of national identity. For the imperialist Russians, it’s a zero-sum game.
Is it not more that Russians have an imperial identity (as formed by their national poet Aleksandr Pushkin) while the Ukrainians have an anti-imperial identity (as formed by _their_ national poet Taras Shevchenko)?
Well, it's not that like those ways to define identity couldn't be complementary or interchangeable particularly in contexts like this one and especially in the early, formative phase.
The current war seems like a continuation of the ethnic conflicts which existed before the USSR but resumed after its breakup -- Yugoslavia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, etc. -- in the form of different color revolutions. Of course, Ukraine is fighting to preserve their identity and autonomy; Russia seeks to enforce their subservient status. These ethnic and national identities are powerful motivators, indeed. Americans have no memory of this type of intensity since 1861.
The current New York Review of Books has a long review essay exploring Putin's strange ethno/religious nationalism. It has a long history & is quite popular. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/02/22/russian-exceptionalism-foundations-of-eurasianism/
Yes, I read it and it's excellent. I'd add another name to that bunch of nutjobs: Ivan Ilyin - full of all that mystical goop like the tsar is in person communion with each Russian soul. Again, Timothy Snyder is excellent on the topic.
“ Ethnic imperialism is exactly what we’re facing in Russia right now. Putin doesn’t want Ukraine’s wheat farms. Nor is he motivated by some world-conquering ideology. He simply wants Russia to rule over all the places he views as being within its historic and linguistic sphere of influence.”
=================
Beg to differ here. Ethnic imperialism doesn’t explain Russia’s involvement in Syria, Venezuela, several African countries, strategic partnership with North Korea and Iran and attempts to influence elections in the US and Europe. Do you think they go to all this trouble just for sake of capturing Ukraine?
I think Russia fully fits the bill of an empire with global ambitions fueled by “an insane ideology.” There is an ethnic component, sure, but it’s only part of it.
Underestimating Poland has historically been a mistake. It manages to come up with great individuals at turning points in history. Marian Adam Rejewski, a Polish mathematician, figured out how the Nazi’s enigma machine worked and built an enigma model for the Allied Forces. A great labor leader, combined with an immensely popular Polish Pope who found common ground with William Casey, director of the CIA who attend a Catholic Mass every morning, turned the tide against Russia. And where did the most young, educated Russians (2 million) choose to flee from Putin: Poland. Imagine the technical an economic advances Poland will make with a generation of Russia’s best and brightest. The irony is rich.
Very interesting, and I agree with the main thrust of it. I think Putin's next aims, if he were to succeed in Ukraine or consolidate his gains and reconstitute his forces, would be Moldova, because it's small and would let him place further pressure on Ukraine, and Estonia, because a NATO failure to either answer the Article 5 call or successfully retake a NATO country after a fait accompli invasion might de facto break the alliance.
North Korea's regime probably benefits largely from the status quo. Iran might be playing a long game and hoping to expand into a strategic vacuum as the West withdraws and possibly if KSA becomes unstable. But Russia and China both seem to have a sense of urgency to achieve strategic wins in the lifetimes of their respective aging leaders.
Very interesting perspective.... it rings true.
Putin seems to me entirely opportunistic regarding which ex-Soviet SSR's or Warsaw Pact members he'd move against militarily. And to what degree. Against Georgia in 2008 he only took about a third of their country--despite shattering their military. He goes for the weak. Poland--with NATO behind it--is most definitely not weak.
Noah's premise that Putin definitely wants to destroy free-market capitalist neighbors and the democratic, rules-based governing structures that enable their prosperity, is spot on. Because democracy represents a direct threat to him personally.
Nice piece. I was very glad to see the results of Poland’s recent election, which served as a setback for the Putinist Law and Justice Party.
That's a little unfair. Law and Justice share Putin's anti-democratic and anti-liberal views, but they want a Polish/Catholic version, not a Russian/Orthodox version. With limited exceptions they have backed Ukraine. Still, good to see them out of power.
Is there any kind of pro-Russian minority in Poland, perhaps made up of people who lost family in the 1943 Volhynia massacres?
This poll gives 91-2 unfavorable to favorable Polish views of Russia
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/spotlight-on-poland-negative-views-of-russia-surge-but-ratings-for-u-s-nato-eu-improve/
As well as your suggestion, I guess there would be some people with a Russian ethnic background, either longstanding or dating from the Cold War. But too few to matter.
True for Poland. But the same story is playing out, albeit on a smaller scale, between Romania and Russia.
Russia has invaded the lands that became modern Romania multiple times since at least the mid-eighteenth century. More recently, the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of 1940 transferred Bessarabia and North Bukovina to the Soviet Union. Romania went to war in 1941 in large part to get them back -- and failed. Neither the Romanians nor the Russians have forgotten.
That makes me wonder why Moldova has not sought (re-)union with Romania, like East Germany. That would automatically make it part of the EU and NATO.
The majority of Moldovans would like to reunite with Romania, according to various surveys. The problem is that Russia has made it abundantly clear that it would not stand for such a measure. As well, there is a very vocal Russian minority in Moldova, settled there by the old Soviet Union, who disrupts efforts at a united front on this issue.
Currently the Russians are in no position to do anything about it (other than hold onto Transnistria) any more than they could stop Sweden and Finland from joining NATO. The current government is pro-NATO and if a referendum on unification passed, the Russians would be at a loss to explain why their referendums in the occupied Ukrainian oblasts were legitimate but one in unoccupied Moldova was not
A Bulgarian ex-girlfriend taught me that Bulgarians (Slavs) are still grateful to Imperial Russia for freeing them from Ottoman control.
I think the Poles actually saved Vienna and Europe from the Ottoman Empire
The Poles broke the Siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683. Bulgaria was aided by the Russians in an independence war considerably later, c.1876.
Ironically a song (Kauan on kärsitty) written to celebrate the Finnish volunteer contribution to that war was later repurposed for use by the Finnish White Army during Finland's 1918 war of independence.
I was hoping someone would watch the interview and provide serious commentary. Tom Nichols failed me in that regard. Very lucid and informative, Noah. Thanks!
Your valid view has been obvious long before Ukraine's invasion. Keep shouting this theme, please. More need to hear.
Thank you