Why the Existence of Pro-Russian Ukrainians Also Doesn’t Justify the Invasion
Or Some History of Separatism in Slavic Democracies
By MARTIN REZNY
Given Colin Robinson’s reaction to my previous article, I suppose the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions does require further clarification. Of course that there are people who live in Ukraine who are pro-Russian, especially in the Eastern part of the country.
When I say something like “people of Ukraine”, the only reasonable interpretation of what I may mean by that is a significant majority, not every single person.
If there was strong pro-Russian support in the rest of the country (the vast majority of the Ukrainian territory), then the resistance there to the Russian “operation” wouldn’t be so absolute, and neither would be the domestic support of Zelensky and his government.
That much is, frankly, obvious. If I may ask, what is your point, Colin?
If it’s something about Naziism, the Azov brigade are neo-Nazis, yes, similar to the Russian Wagner Group. Which are both similar in extremism and brutality to the Chechen forces under Kadyrov. Nothing about any aspect of this gives anyone any justification for the currently ongoing invasion.
If I had to pick who’s the least worst, maybe the Nazis who stick to defense would be that, as opposed to the nazguls (let’s use that from now on as a catch-all term) who are on the offensive. Hm, now I wonder how Tolkien predicted the “naz” part at the beginning.
Anyway, let me tell you something about actual Nazis in border regions attached to an imperial aggressor state who fight to undermine a democracy, as a Czech person. Ever heard of Sudetenland?
In the first Czechoslovakia, there were over 3 million German-speaking people, mostly living in the regions adjacent to Germany and Austria. In the lead-up to WW2, the Nazi influence in Czechoslovakian politics was the Sudeten German Party, which was getting over a million votes at its peak.
Its purpose was to undermine the regime, to create some sort of justification for Germany laying claim to our territories. Like, I don’t know, to go save oppressed German people and reunite them with their Vaterland.
Unlike Ukraine today, we were betrayed by our western allies via the Munich Treaty (negotiated about us, without us), resulting in our surrender. If we decided to fight instead, I imagine the situation would be eerily similar to this invasion. With the local Germans loyal to Germany running around sabotaging things, until they could join the invading army.
I’m honestly interested — how legitimate, justified, or moral does that sound to you, on a scale from 0 to 10? Any German who wanted to be German could have moved to Germany or Austria back then to live there. Any pro-Russian Ukrainian could have moved to Russia recently to live there. Alternatively, anyone in a democracy, who wants to be better represented, can run for office, or support a party that best represents them.
The problem arises when such people and the party want to secede, by any means necessary. Inciting a civil war and invasion and welcoming invading armies, hoping to join them and profit from the situation, now that takes a special kind of person. Such people are called separatists, and its one of the few types of people that even democracies like Ukraine or the First Czechoslovakia tend to suppress and fight aggressively. They have to, unfortunately, or they would be really inviting an invasion.
In our part of the European continent, there’s also a term for a citizen of a country who works to undermine it to help an external aggressor, “kolaborant”. Whichever way you want to look at it, there are no greater internal enemies of a state than separatists and kolaborants, assuming they choose violent, non-democratic means of getting what they want.
Honestly, in response to this betrayal (the internal betrayal by a large number of ethnically German citizens and Czech kolaborants), we have overreacted. After the war, by presidential decree, all Germans from the border regions were exiled to Germany and Austria. Fortunately, since then, we have learned to live with Germans in peace, while Germany abandoned imperialism.
What that gave us all were decades of peace and prosperity. Today, any German or Austrian can move to the Czech Republic or Slovakia to live here, and any Czech or Slovak can move to Germany or Austria to live there. Which is great. Of course, there are some German politicians who try to score points by asking for reparations every now and then (mainly for show), and there are some Czechs who have lingering resentment or distrust of the Germans.
But nobody’s trying to take back by force that which used to belong to their ancestors, kolaborant or non-kolaborant, and nobody’s trying to get revenge over what one group of ancestors did to the other group of ancestors. For an example of the pointlessness and horror of the latter option, see the Balkan wars. When you don’t let go of the past, you only get to relive its worst parts.
Wars aren’t exactly original, especially not in Europe. There will always be some group of assholes, some ancient blood feud, some imperial claim, some dumb ideology, and loads of propaganda, but the only thing one has to keep in mind is this — in war, innocent people die. Therefore, war is bad, and people who want wars to happen are bad. You can’t justify starting wars.
That somebody is an asshole doesn’t give you the right to kill them, let alone any innocent bystanders. Ancient feud doesn’t give you the right to kill innocent people. Land claim doesn’t give you the right to kill innocent people. Ideology doesn’t give you the right to kill innocent people. Propaganda definitely doesn’t give you the right to kill innocent people. It’s not a morally complicated situation. The problem is how many people don’t care.
If you prefer pragmatism, war also makes everyone have less, including the victor. The main reason why countries in the region prefer the west over Russia is that free trade, free travel, and free exchange of information, coupled with guaranteed personal freedoms, makes everyone have more of everything. Blowing up stuff and getting people killed makes there be less stuff and fewer people. And less trade, travel, communication, and so on.
If you want a simple comparison, European Union “invades” places by building infrastructure there and by spreading mildly annoying propaganda which basically amounts to “nationalism is bad”.
Russia invades places with spies and tanks, destroying local infrastructure (like the ammunition depots that were blown up in the Czech Republic recently by Russian agents), thus proving that nationalism is bad.
All I’m trying to say is, as the post-WW2 period has shown, we can have a Europe without war, and it makes for a much better Europe. There will always be some separatists, and nazguls, and spy shenanigans, but there don’t have to be states invading other states. That’s the kind of history that historians keep telling people not to repeat.
Or let me put it this way, living in a country occupied by Russian tanks is terrible, whether they’re currently firing or not. Imagine that NATO would invade its own member state to overthrow its government for getting too democratic, or just threaten to do that. How would you feel about that?
In 1968, the Warsaw Pact army invaded Czechoslovakia, a member state, to subvert the so-called Prague Spring movement. That’s apparently exactly the type of “greatness” that Russia is trying to return to now.
Returning back to the Nazi part of our history, the one thing that historians keep debating specifically is that maybe if the west didn’t make it easy for Hitler to take Sudetenland, he would have stopped at Sudetenland, even if he eventually took it. If Putin really only wanted to liberate Donetsk and Lugansk, that would be one thing. It appears he has greater ambitions.
Given all this history, as a Czech person, I just don’t see how doing Munich Treaty: Ukrainian Edition would have been the right call. Maybe now, this whole thing stops with Ukraine. Hopefully without anybody using any nuclear weapons, but that’s a whole another debate.
