Not at all! You're making major leaps of assumption here!
People who know me here (insofar as it is possible) know that I am a Chestertonian, and that I find Chesterton's views on most issues to be most squarely in line with Orthodoxy.
Chesterton very much believed in the small nation - the smaller, the better, so he would hardly cheer foreign annexation, when it is indeed foreign. He championed first and foremost local self-rule.
All awesome.
I think even your idea of imposing Ukrainian hegemony to be too imperialistic, and a Russian imposition even more so. But it is not a question of "Which empire do we want ruling the Crimea?" but of "What does the democratic consensus of the people of Crimea want?" And so the propaganda wars began on both sides in earnest.[/quote]
And we still don't know because a unfair election was forced down their throats.
The problem begins in the historical considerations. If I were only 25 or 30, and gave only passing thought to the history of places, I would probably think like you do.
Gee, thanks.
Only I was a double major in politics and history and a masters in the history of Christianity. The non-religious, non-American history section in my library currently totals around three hundred volumes. I have a dedicated section for Russia and Eastern Europe.
Only I know that there was a state called Kievan Rus, itself a hint at an interrelation more complex and interrelated than that of Englishmen and Americans, and that the relations between what we call today "Russia" and "Ukraine" are far more thoroughly interwoven over the centuries than the neat term "independent" - a state that never existed in (the) Ukraine for all that time - could ever tell us.
Once again, my wife is Ukrainian. I'm well aware of the history of Kyivan Rus', the development of Moscovy, and the relationship between the two. What I would contend that is Russian culture and Ukrainian culture are equally derivative of the heritage of Kyivan Rus', together with the Belorus' culture. But since at least the thirteenth century, the Russian and Ukrainian cultures have had distinct histories, the former having been suzerain to Kazan Tatars, the other incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.
Unfortunately, you seem to be completely unaware there was ever a state called the Cossack Hetmanate that submitted to the Russian Empire during the Great Northern War in the face of Swedish imperialism.
It is true that Ukraine, to speak your language out of charity, has been considered an independent nation-state for about twenty years, or most of your life. But it is not true that such a declaration automatically severed in real terms real ties of blood and history by that declaration.
And I've never said anything to the contrary. The existence of a free and independent Ukraine that has total sovereignty of its foreign relations such that it could, if it wanted, join NATO and the EU or, if it wanted, join the Russian currency union, does not deny that there are close cultural ties between the two nations.
Indeed, it was the attempts to impose universal Ukrainization that led to people en masse to protest that enforced severing of said ties.
I'm sorry when was this?
In speaking to Russians of an imperialist bent, I'd have to try to present the OTHER side of the picture, the fact that the lands are NOT mere colonies of Russia, and that there really ARE other cultures and languages in play that Russian hegemony never resolved or absorbed.
So in the end it is these simplistic one-sided views that I reject - on BOTH sides. And if I am not in a hurry to adopt new terminologies, I think there is a strong basis for not doing so.
Mel already outlined why "the" Ukraine, while fairly common English usage, conforms to a pattern of English usage that either designates federations (the US, the UK) or geographic features and territories (the Costwalds). "The" Ukraine indicates the latter, and reflects the political realities of the Ukrainian SSR as a constituent member of the Soviet Union and, more historically, the borderland of Russia. It is a antiquated as referring to the Russian Empire or West Germany, and as silly (and offensive) as saying Persia instead of Iran or the Soviets instead of the Russians.
