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2024-10-04 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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'1991 Borders': Ukraine Stubbornly Demands What It Has Refused
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Denis Davydov and Vladislav Sovin
[REGNUM] The mantra about returning the “1991 borders” in the Ukrainian version has long become an integral part of any international meetings, and Ukraine’s allies echo it in every possible way on this issue.
Recently, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries stated that they will never recognize the annexation of Ukrainian regions by Russia and demanded that the Russian Federation abandon “its claims regarding the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, as well as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.”
The formula about borders has become so familiar and categorical that no one even thinks that it fundamentally contradicts the concept that official Kyiv has been building for many years. After all, the borders of Ukraine as of 1991 are the borders of the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent part of the USSR, formed in this form thanks to the targeted policy of the Soviet state.
At the same time, the modern Ukrainian concept of "state-building" categorically denies any connection with it, pursuing a policy of total "decommunization" and "decolonization". The countdown of Ukrainian statehood begins with the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) of the period 1917-1920, and the annexation of eastern Polish lands to the Ukrainian SSR is traditionally called occupation.
Consequently, the size of the territory and the contours of the Ukrainian borders have no connection to 1991. Moreover, the redistribution of territories in Europe (and not only there) by Ukraine’s Western partners created enough precedents to no longer speak so categorically about Russia’s actions.
"THERE IS TERRITORY UNDER THE CARRIAGE"
As the first experience of independent nationalist statehood, the Ukrainian People's Republic of the early 20th century and its leaders are glorified at all levels - from school textbooks to monuments and street names. Symon Petliura, the head of the Directory of the UPR, is among the main national heroes.
At the state level, various dates associated with this period of history are annually celebrated, in particular the so-called Day of Unity on January 22, when Zelensky invariably records another pompous address to the people. But then it is completely logical to consider the starting position and borders of the UPR - not those to which it formally claimed, but within which it actually existed.
The first step was the proclamation by the Central Rada (the governing body of various Ukrainian organizations created in March 1917) of the autonomy of Ukraine within Russia. It was allowed within a limited framework by the then Provisional Government, which recognized this autonomy on the territory of five provinces: Kyiv, Volyn, Podolsk, Poltava and Chernigov (with the exception of part of its northern districts).
The Kiev optimists did not receive the desired nine provinces and did not object to this; the text of the First Universal was read by Vladimir Vynnychenko on June 10 (23), 1917 at the Second All-Ukrainian Military Congress and proclaimed that, “without separating from all of Russia… the Ukrainian people must manage their own lives.” The following two Universals reinforced this position.
Thus, the original territory of the autonomous Ukraine as part of Russia included only the central lands and part of the western ones, and its total area was significantly less than half of the territory of the Ukrainian SSR according to the 1991 borders.
When the creation of the UPR was proclaimed after the October Revolution, it aimed at a much larger territory, including Donbass, Kharkov and Odessa. But such desires again did not coincide with reality. Neither the Bolsheviks who came to power in Petrograd, nor the majority of the population of the territories that the UPR declared its own, had any intention of recognizing its claims.
In the confrontation that soon unfolded, the "unrecognized republic" was defeated, the Central Rada fled even from Kyiv and by the end of January 1918 controlled only part of Right-Bank Ukraine. In these conditions, the delegation of the UPR, which began negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary, hastily concluded a peace treaty with the latter, according to which it was recognized as an independent state, but in fact passed under external German-Austrian control.
If we talk about the UPR in its second period of existence - from November 1918 to 1920, headed by a new supreme body - the Directory, then everything was even more interesting there. After the defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires and their collapse, the revived UPR regained control over part of the Ukrainian lands, including Kyiv, for some time.
On January 22, 1919, the unification ( the "Act of Zluka" ) of the UPR with the ZUNR - the West Ukrainian People's Republic, created on the territory of Eastern Galicia, which had previously been part of Austria-Hungary, was pompously proclaimed. However, the Red Army was already advancing from the east, and from the west - the Poles, who had revived their state, an integral part of which they considered most of Western Ukraine.
So by the beginning of spring of the same 1919, a little over a month after the "Act of Zluka", only Zhitomir and Vinnytsia remained under the control of the UPR from the large cities. The famous Ukrainian satirical writer Ostap Vyshnya, who witnessed all these events with his own eyes, aptly characterized the situation with the phrase "In the carriage there is the Directory - under the carriage there is territory", which became a catchphrase.
The French consul in Odessa, Emile Henno, who at one time negotiated with the Petliurists regarding the acceptance of the UPR under the protectorate of France, called them "a gang of fanatics without any influence." As a result, due to the complete worthlessness of the UPR, the Western powers - the victors in the First World War, not only did not satisfy the exorbitant Ukrainian territorial "wants" presented at the Paris Peace Conference, but also did not recognize it in principle as a separate state - within any borders.
The last attempt of Petliura and company to stay afloat was the conclusion of the Warsaw Treaty with Pilsudski's Poland in April 1920. In exchange for recognition of the UPR headed by himself and receiving military aid against the Red Army, Petliura agreed to the inclusion of the western Ukrainian lands of Galicia and Volyn into Poland, completely nullifying that same "Zluka" with ZUNR.
However, this alliance with the Poles did not help the Directory, and after the end of the Polish-Soviet War, the UPR, left without territory even under a train car, ceased to exist.
"SOVIET OCCUPATION"
The creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic fully corresponded to the political moment, and both of them had exactly the same right to exist as the UPR. The DKR, by the way, was also an autonomy within the RSFSR - the process of self-determination after the fall of the empire allowed for any options.
Therefore, the political competition for territory was fair: who had the better idea and more bayonets. As in our days, Kyiv called for help from the Germans and Poles, and Yuzov (future Donetsk) - the Russians. And the fact that Petliura and the romantics from the Central Rada had no unifying ideology and their own resources (just like Zelensky and those sitting in the Verkhovna Rada) - that's their problem.
The crux of the matter is that Soviet Ukraine became a full-fledged state with all its attributes, including a clear state border, while the UPR did not, and it officially renounced its western part. As a result, the Ukrainian SSR of 1939 had a border along the Zbruch. And as a result of the Soviet-Polish war, Poland completely annulled the Warsaw Treaty of 1920 with the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the new treaty established the borders between the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR, and the Polish Republic.
No other Ukrainian republics existed any more, and Crimea was not part of the Ukrainian SSR, just as it was not part of the UPR.
In 1939, Galicia and Volyn, which had previously been part of Poland, were annexed to Ukraine. Following this, in 1940, Northern Bukovina (today's Chernivtsi region) and Southern Bessarabia (the south of Odessa region), occupied by Romania after World War I, were annexed.
In 1945, after the victory in the Great Patriotic War, Transcarpathia, which until 1938-1939 was part of Czechoslovakia, was included in the Ukrainian SSR, and during its division was captured by Hungary. Finally, in 1954, Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR as a gift in honor of the anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada - since then denounced by "patriots" at least twice.
The entire Soviet period has been officially declared an occupation period in Ukraine, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has been declared criminal, and the rhetoric of Poland and Romania about an act of aggression with the seizure of “ancestral territories” has been supported. On April 9, 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a package of laws on “decommunization,” as well as the law “On the condemnation of the communist and national-socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and the ban on the propaganda of their symbols.”
In April 2023, Zelensky signed a law on "decolonization", as the former head of the Institute of National Memory Volodymyr Vyatrovich stated, "this is a systemic document on the liberation of our country from the markers of the "Russian world". This law directly "recognizes as criminal and condemns Russian imperial policy". So, in full accordance with its spirit and letter, the territorial acquisitions of the Soviet period are a solid marker of the Russian world and the consequences of imperial policy.
And the fact that the “1991 borders” are not a dogma was confirmed by President Viktor Yushchenko. When in 2004 Romania appealed to the International Court of Justice with the question of delimitation of the continental shelf in the area of Zmeinoye Island, which belongs to Ukraine, it refused to appeal to the demarcation and delimitation of the borders between the USSR and Romania that took place in the first post-war years. Although it was then mutually recognized by both parties.
In the dispute with Romania, Ukraine could have resorted to the support of the Russian Federation as the successor to the Soviet Union, once and for all closing the question of the ownership of part of its territory. But instead, Kyiv accepted a court decision, according to which 80% of the continental shelf around Zmeinoye went to Romania.
Thus, this precedent has already made the borders different from those in 1991.
And the process of revising the borders that emerged in Europe after the end of World War II was not started by Russia at all. One could start with West Germany's absorption of the GDR in 1990, but the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia in 1991 and the separation of Kosovo as a result of direct military aggression by NATO are more appropriate here.
This is also a precedent that provides grounds for individual regions thirsting for self-determination. Especially if we are talking about a country that is quite consciously rejecting its own territories.
Ukraine must get what it so desperately wants: complete decommunization and decolonization, an integral part of which is decommunization of borders. Let them be honest with themselves.
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Posted by badanov 2024-10-04 00:00||
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