Hrytsak, Yaroslav. The Forging of a Nation. – NY: PublicAffairs, 2023. – 438 p.

Speaking about the heritage of the first President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, Yaroslav Trofimov praises Kravchuk’s achievement:

“Kravchuk was a controversial figure, blamed by many for maintaining Ukraine in a post-Soviet limbo and preventing reforms. Yet at a time when Ukraine’s statehood was fragile and perhaps seen as artificial and transitory by many in Russian-speaking cities like Kharkiv and Odesa, he had laid the foundation of the nation’s long-term survival. He ensured that the new multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Ukrainian state would be as inclusive as possible.

At independence in 1991, Ukraine – unlike Estonia or Latvia – granted citizenship to all its residents. It eliminated the Soviet era ethnicity clause from identity documents. Under that Soviet concept of nationality, someone like Zelensky, because of his Jewish origin, was not considered a Ukrainian at all. Neither were the millions of other Ukrainians of Russian, Tatar, Bulgarian, or Hungarian blood.”
[Trofimov, 2024: 220]

Trofimov exaggerates, of course, both Soviet drawbacks and the achievements of the “independent” Ukraine. Indeed, due to the arrogance and inefficiency of Soviet propaganda, the principles of soft power were rarely practiced in a one-party state that got used to ordering people around rather than persuading them.

However, Ukraine, remains s very diligent pupil to the Soviet foolish, heavy-handed and inefficient ways in the sphere of social equality, mass media, education, criminal justice, law-enforcement and self-determination. (though it is showcased by the West as the country of “vibrant democracy” that is fighting tooth and nail against its Soviet past).

To claim that Kravchuk ensured “the nation’s long-term survival” and “that the new multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Ukrainian state would be as inclusive as possible” – amounts to spitting into the wind, because the opposite is true:

1) Kravchuk wa ... Читать дальше »