Crimea and Ukraine

It’s a weird situation, down there in the Ukraine. A legacy from times gone by, when people believed you could simply redraw boundaries and borders to suit your political needs, without any need to address nationalistic feelings among the population of the areas concerned.

Following both World Wars, the post-war period, the cold war, the fall of the iron curtain and the Anschluss, borders were repositioned. We saw it happen with former Yugoslavia, with the formation of Israel. And centuries earlier we saw it happen with colonization.

Time and again people have tried to claim countries or parts thereof, with mixed result. But in most cases without permanent result. The strange this is, you see, that the monkey trick applies to people. It is part of their cultural instinct, if you will.

The Monkey Trick, as I call it, is a social experiment in which monkeys in a cage are taught that they should not go up a ladder to get a banana hanging from the ceiling, because they will get hosed down for it. Once every monkey in the group has been hosed down when trying for the banana, the experimenters replace one of the monkeys with one who has not witnessed this punishment for going up the ladder. But as soon as it does, the other monkeys, who know the penalty for going up the ladder, will keep the newcomer from doing so. Once the new monkey has been thoroughly indoctrinated in this way, another monkey is replaced. This goes on until none of the monkeys in the cage have ever actually seen any of them being punished for going up the ladder. But still they will keep each other from doing so.

Same applies to people living in a country. There is a piece of southern Hungary, for instance, which before the Great War belonged to Austria. But Austria lost the war, and had to give it up. Even today you can find people living in that part of Hungary who are angry and feel they are Austrian and should be brought back into the Austrian fold. Even though none of them have consciously experienced the changeover. But they have been raised with the idea of being different, better than their Hungarian neighbors, who in turn have been raised believing this part of their country has been legitimately gained from the loser of the war. It is the monkey trick in human terms.

And this can be observed in every part of the World where countries’ borders have been rearranged. And there are many of those.

So too applies to the Crimea. It is, therefore, no wonder that a great many people living there still feel themselves to be Russian instead of Ukrainian. And in this case there are still quite a few left from the time that Nikita Chroestjev gave the Crimea to Ukraine as a gift. But then even Ukraine was considered very Russian. It was an integral part of the Axis powers, the Eastern Block, the Russians. Though formally a Union of socialist republics, the USSR was generally referred to as “Russia”, and not without reason. So it’s no wonder that many people living in the Crimea still feel very Russian. Despite the years and years they have been part of the Ukraine, and despite the fact this country is now much more independent than it was back in the days.

So I feel it is much too easy to say that the people of the Crimea have no right to declare themselves Russian, because the newly formed, temporary government in Kiev has declared the Ukraine to be non-Russian, so to speak, by overthrowing Janoekovitsj who was decidedly pro Russian.

On the other hand I don’t condone the actions of the pro-Russia activists on the Crimea who threaten and beat anybody who is protesting this pro Russian attitude. Actually I think it is there ware Poetin is making his mistake. If he were to guarantee free speech for everyone on the Crimea, allowing for anti-Russian protests, he would still get what he wants from the referendum which is to be held, but with much less protest from the western world.  With all the violence against anti Russian citizens it plays much like an annexation like the ones we saw in Prague and Hungary too in the mid former century. Poetin could have the Crimea come to him as did East Germany to West Germany. Instead he’s making it a new cold war. A very stupid thing to do, really.

But beneath all this tension and threat of war, lies the problem of ethnicity and the monkey trick. You just can’t ignore ethnicity and just give away land to people who are not part of that particular ethnicity. It will never be permanent. You can be sure that at some point in time those people will rise up and want to revert back to whatever was there before everything changed. Which, of course, is by then impossible, because everything has changed.

The idea not to overthrow a bad government because you never know if the one to follow won’t be worse, is actually not so crazy after all. I used to think it was madness. Get rid of the tyrants, install a new, democratic government, and live happily ever after. But it doesn’t work that way. As we can see by what has happened in Egypt, in Libya, and what is still happening in Syria, but also Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela etcetera. Big, sudden changes have a much greater chance of failure than slow, gradual ones. Because all the monkeys in the cage have to get used to the new rules. And that takes time.

So I think the thing to do with regards to the Crimea is go slow. Let’s not have people vote for things they might get to regret later. Ask the people of Crimea now what they want to be, and the majority will probably say Russian. A yoyo effect will ensue, as we can see in African countries, where one tribe commits atrocities to another tribe. And when the dust has settled and the tables have turned, the same thing will happen, but the other way round. And this will go on and on until someone says STOP, we’ll go slow and get used to a new situation. And no sooner than when all the monkeys (no racism intended) have been thoroughly accustomed to the new situation, will we free the reign and introduce a form of government that presupposes a principal tolerance for anyone who is in any way different; ethnically of otherwise.