{"id":27781,"date":"2022-03-26T22:12:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-26T21:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=27781"},"modified":"2022-03-27T11:49:16","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T10:49:16","slug":"is-ukraine-an-artificial-state-as-president-putin-suggests-or-a-true-state-as-president-zelensky-argues-what-constitutes-a-nation-state-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=27781","title":{"rendered":"Is Ukraine an artificial state, as President Putin suggests, or a true state, as President Zelensky argues? What constitutes a nation state anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At present, I am reading a fascinating history of Ukraine: \u201cBorderland\u201d by Anna Reid.<\/a> What is clear is that the reality of Ukraine as a nation state is a very recent one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many centuries, most of what we now call Ukraine was ruled by Lithuania or Poland or a combination of the two. For many centuries afterwards, Ukraine was ruled by Tsarist Russia or the USSR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although calls for Ukrainian independence have ebbed and flowed, they have always come from a small minority. As Anna Reid puts it: “Ukrainians won independence on 24 August 1991 by default. Many had dreamed of independence, but none had expected it, none had prepared for it<\/em>“. Writing in 1997, she refers to “Ukraine’s fuzzy sense of national identity”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past three decades, Ukraine has done a decent job of nation-building, even if that required a revolution and involved an insurgency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there were still major cleavages in Ukrainian society: between Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers, between the west and the east, between the cities and the towns & villages. Ironically what Putin has managed to achieve in the last month is a deeper and more uniform sense of national identity among Ukrainians than has ever been the case in its history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view, Ukraine is now a nation state and deserves that status. Any doubts that anyone might have about this should be dispelled by the bravery and unity of the Ukrainians people in the last month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, all over the world, this issue of what defines nationhood is a major political problem. Around the globe, most countries have communities within them that believe that they have a right to statehood. Scotland in the UK, Catalonia in Spain, Kurds in Iraq, Western Sahara in Morocco, Quebec in Canada, Kashmir in India, Tibet & Taiwan in China. The list goes on and on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many years ago, I started to discuss this issue of nationhood and wrote a short essay which I think still stands up. You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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