aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] Andrey Zorin: Why We Don't Like Ukraine

["Walter R Iwaskiw" <wiwa@loc.gov>]

Why We Don't Like Ukraine
Missing the empire is not just missing the territory, it's missing the history

Arguments over the Empire

There is a new New Year's lark in Russia. In the last weeks of the old year,
it assails Ukraine over Cape Tuzla, which no one had ever heard of before.
We tried to make them observe falsified election results and were sincerely
nonplussed at their unwillingness to do so. We nearly quintupled the price
of natural gas for them. And you always have to make up for it in the new
year. The regularity of those attacks and the broad public support they
received rule out the possibility that it was all just someone's
incompetence or greed. The causes lie deeper. 

It seems that the Russian public, right up to its political elite, is beginning to realize that Ukraine's statehood is an irreversible reality. This is a painful process and it has certain characteristic complexes associated with it, such as a separation complex and infantile resentment. One of the reasons for this reaction is that the imperial syndrome is rooted in the understanding of history that has reigned supreme in our national consciousness for the last 200 years. 

[...]

by  Andrey Zorin, Professor of Russian History, Oxford University

http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=527&id=643367