So, at the very least, it seems to be a much more complex situation than "support the people in Kiev, the protesters in Kiev, and we will lead Ukraine to the liberal democratic promised land."
NICOLAI PETRO: Yes. I was taken to task a bit earlier today on the use of the term "radicals." The person I was discussing this with said that the people who are protesters are not all radicals. That makes sense to me.
I define a radical as someone who behaves in an illegal manner. In other words, I take it as axiomatic that a law-abiding citizen, if they come to a place and a policeman says "step back," they step back. They don't step forward and begin to throw bricks at the policeman just because they think they have a right to be there.
There is a certain cognizance and respect for law and order that is necessary in any civilized society.
One of the problems that we see in defining the Maidan and getting the Maidan into the political process--that's one of the phrases that I think is very astutely used here; I've seen it used by Ukrainian political analysts. How do we get the Maidan, which is outside the political process, to acknowledge and become part of the political process? Because right now we have an elite that claims to speak for the protesters--that's the parliamentary political opposition that I was talking about--but in fact they do not seem to have any control over the streets. This was demonstrated very clearly in the events that took place this month.
Let us recall that the president, under pressure, signed a blanket amnesty agreement and said that "in exchange for this amnesty, the opposition"--and we're not going to go into whether they are legitimate or illegitimate--"the opposition with whom we are negotiating must be able to deliver the liberation of the government buildings that they have occupied since December. Then the amnesty will enter into force."
The two weeks in the beginning of January were really a period when a lot of analysts, I think, asked themselves: "Well, what's going to happen now? Will we see that the political opposition is actually in control of what's happening in the streets and they will be able to deliver; or will it collapse, which would demonstrate that they are not in control of the political process, and whatever agreements they sign mean nothing to the people in the streets?"
I think what we have seen since the 17th--the amnesty was in effect for one day, and during that day the newspapers, the media, were full of complaints by the people who I think are legitimately called radicals, who said: "This is a betrayal. This is a betrayal of the revolution. We must take the fight to the end. What did people die for back in January if not for a total national revolution? We do not acknowledge this compromise."
The very next day, there was the so-called peaceful assault on the parliament, which ended in the burning of the headquarters of the Party of Regions and two deaths. Office workers from there were shot by the demonstrators. And then we have the events that took place subsequently as the riot police were engaged to push the protesters back to the Meydan. Since then, there have been ongoing clashes and deaths.
DAVID SPEEDIE: And, if I might interject a thought, even for those who believe in the legitimacy of revolutionary tactics in extreme situations of repression and so on and so forth, isn't it true to say that there are other elements in Maidan and beyond--for example, this new right sector that seems to be basically a motley collection of football hooligans and neo-Nazis and every other sort of anti-social group one could think of?
And is it also not true that what is not reported is that in Lviv, or at least in parts of the west, there are very ugly and ominous manifestations of anti-Semitism, for example, with houses having "Jews live here" scrawled on the walls, which takes us back to an ugly past?
NICOLAI PETRO: Yes. This small but very active, aggressive, and influential segment of the opposition, what I'll call "the radicals"--violence is not something that they shy away from. Violence is something that they welcome as the midwife to the new Ukraine.
That's what I think is something that I do not see either the Western media, or, even more disturbingly perhaps, Western governmental officials, really comprehend and understand, that we are facing a situation that they, as Europeans, have not faced since 1920, since the March on Rome of Mussolini's fascists, or in pre-Nazi Germany in Weimar and Weimar Germany.
These are weak governmental institutions, fragile democracies, in which a lot of people are attracted to the idea of "let us come together as a nation to get rid of the scum, to get rid of the fat cats, and distribute the wealth to the people"--a kind of Robin Hood slogan.
And then, there is the sense of historical entitlement, an historical injustice done to the core, the heartland, of the Ukrainian nation to the west, to Galicia, and anybody who speaks Russian, anybody who maintains any cultural or sentimental attachment to Russia, is maybe not really authentically Ukrainian. This is not a healthy perspective, and certainly not the way to keep the country together.
DAVID SPEEDIE: So, again thinking ahead, this vision of a new Ukraine could be something that is either very ugly or more promising, depending on outcomes. But clearly, from the point of view of the outside as it were, we have people who are self-described liberal interventionists. The mantra there, whether it be in Ukraine--we heard it in Syria also and in Egypt--"something must be done, something must be done to end this crisis." And the impulse is, of course, to intervene.
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