Roots of Ukrainian Hatred

Ioannis Andris

An Asymmetry

For the unbiased observer of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, a creature perhaps only slightly rarer than the mythological unicorn, an acute asymmetry, a discrepancy amongst the attitudes of the societies, officials, and public language (again both unofficial as expressed in the various online or real-life fora and the official statements) of the two warring sides has since the very beginning been evident. By “the very beginning” dear reader, I need to clarify that I refer to at least 2014, though as we shall see, the roots of this discrepancy lie further in the past, albeit its manifestations and its effect on generating tangible political results, prime amongst them being the actual war being waged as we speak, and the way each side is waging it, is a new phenomenon. So, what is this dissimilarity, this inconsistency in attitudes amongst the Ukrainian and Russian publics and what lies beneath it? 

It is clear - one side hates the other with passion, an almost genocidal passion that denies the enemy its very humanity and fuels murderous intent on a mass scale, while the other is viewing its adversary as a prodigal cousin of sorts, brother even, gone astray after falling under the malignant influence of others, strangers with foreign ideas that somehow swayed him to a life of banditry but from which salvation (perhaps involving a good knock in the head) is not only possible but ultimately historically inevitable.

Oh, you will be forgiven dear reader if a steady diet of news from such respectable sources as CNN, BBC, the Office of the President of Ukraine’s FB account or the wild assortment of Twitter handles adorned with blue-yellow flags and smug looking dog avatars has led you to immediately deduce from the preceding paragraph that the side full of passionate hatred to which I refer must be Russia, for I am sorry to disappoint you but the coin is flipped, you are looking at the wrong side of Janus. That ever-flowing tainted spring of seething hatred and genocidal mania-and no, these words are not uttered at all lightly or in hyperbole-is Ukraine, that beloved perennial “victim” of the western masses. 

Now, to be clear, amongst both sides there exist outliers and exceptions, but these do not distort the overall picture of which there should be no doubt as to what it portrays. Admittedly, to peer into it would have required lot of time, effort, and some at least basic understanding of the prior history of the two societies and grasp of their common-Russian- language. Since the notion that it is Ukrainians, who are portrayed for the western audiences by their gatekeepers of truth as almost infallible, innocent victims of the vilest aggression and most heinous crimes by the villainous “Russian invaders”, are in reality the ones filled with genocidal hatred and plenty of innocent blood on their hands, might sound preposterous to you dear and sensible reader, it is a prerequisite to first present some evidence of this claim-which I even dare label as self-evident! 

Well, for some of us, the mere recalling of the names of “Gorlovka Madonna”, Vadim Papura and Inna Kukurudza, to name but a few, and most importantly, recalling the reaction of the Ukrainian public as that was expressed in those fateful days of 2014 to these events, is enough to settle the debate about which side is morally right. But admittedly, for the vast majority of the Western audience, these events are simply non-existent because none of their respectable media sources bothered to cover them.

A Brief History and some Tokens of Hatred

But I might be getting ahead of events. Let’s go back to the fateful days prior to the active, the kinetic phase of history so to speak, where actions become condensed and accelerated. Back in late 2013, when long before any Russian soldier appeared in Crimea (well, except the tens of thousands stationed in the naval base and other military facilities there since at least 1945 when Crimea was de jure part of Russia), energetic crowds of Ukrainian youths, protesting against their government, were chanting “who doesn’t jump is a Muscovite”. The term “Muscovite” here referred not solely to the inhabitants of Moscow-who typically for any dwellers of capital cities across the world, are often looked upon with a certain amalgam of envy and resentment even by their own compatriots - but to Russians in general. We begin to see the contours of the genesis of the identity of an outcast, someone who must be cast aside from the “healthy” group so as not to infect it, ostracized not for what he did but for who he is by birth, by heritage, by nature. In short, the genesis of discrimination. 

Russians, at least the ones that did follow the news closely and not from the official sources that were rather hesitant and typically analytically incompetent or unwilling to unravel the truth, were taken aback and rather shocked by these strange slogans. After all, weren’t the Ukrainians their own blood, their kinsmen? What could they possibly mean by this Moskali (Muscovite) nonsense? It wouldn’t be long after, only a few months and the burning alive of almost 50 people in Odessa, that Russians would begin to understand what it all meant-and not due to their authorities or media who strived and to a degree still strive to hide these ugly realities.

Slogans such as “Suitcase-Station-Russia!” aimed at pro-Russia Ukrainian citizens and the ”who doesn’t jump is a Muscovite”, were very quickly and predictably (for everyone but the Russian authorities apparently) followed by the much less innocent “death to Muscovites”, in parallel with the resurgence of a host of historically interesting symbols, Heil-ing from the (in)glorious past of World War II Ukraine, that became ubiquitous in the numerous anti-government marches across the central -western parts of the country and predominantly in the capital Kiev. These consisted of a motley assortment of Black-Red flags of the WW2 era UPA gang-turned political party and its contemporary brethren of the Right Sector, wielding portraits of its long dead leader Stepan Bandera, to more exotic ones like Wehrmacht paraphernalia, and SS patches (not an uncommon sight amongst Ukrainian soldiers now). Meanwhile, the “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Heroes!” chant that once accompanied myriads of scenes of war crimes in WW2 became mainstream in the ranks of protesters (and now is repeated ad nauseam by European and US politicians as a sign of support for Ukraine). 

Now let’s be clear dear reader. Symbols and their usage do allow space for multiple interpretations regarding the purposes served, and the same symbol might acquire somewhat different meanings throughout history as this is used by different people in different times, but when such historically small intervals and glaring similarities of the situation surrounding their use are involved, it also means that little room for doubt as to their meaning is left. In short, believing that the grandchildren of a Ukrainian SS volunteer or UPA war criminals are singing Erika or adorning themselves with swastikas because it is edgy and they are oblivious to their direct historical meaning is ridiculous. Even so, I do not care to argue that all Ukrainians brandishing a Wolfsangel are nazi sympathizers-what I do care to raise your attention to is the hatred that these symbols intrinsically entail, the fact that those brandishing them have been consumed by a misanthropic hatred-in this case against Russians, the nature and origin of which we will later on this article delve into. So, the average Ukrainian nationalist might not want to exterminate all Poles or Jews as his Ukrainian UPA/SS grandpa wanted but he does want to exterminate all Russians if he partakes in this imagery and symbolism.

The true bursting of the dam of misanthropic and russophobic hatred though, came after the Maidan coup d'état, and the Crimean Special Operation Russia launched as a means to protect its citizens in the peninsula. After that, all pretexts were gone and what was simmering for long under the filthy swamp of Ukrainian civic life came to the fore with bombastic and grotesque alacrity. Russians were now semi-officially “subhumans” and Russia was now “Mordor”, an evil that must be destroyed. In fact, the only acceptable in “polite society” Russian was one who would denounce each and every vestige of his Russianness, and become an abstraction, a hollow being lobotomized with his sole life purpose to parrot the most vulgar and simplistic western propaganda, and meant to live in one of the dozens of constituent provinces that would replace the Russian Federation after Russia’s defeat. 

The indiscriminate shelling of Donetsk civilians was hailed in Ukrainian society, collectively glaring at the death of “Muscovites” even when Donbass children were slaughtered by Ukrainian fire. The bombing of the Lugansk administration building, and above all the Odessa massacre of 2nd May of 2014 where a mob of Ukrainian nationalist thugs lynched and burned alive 46 people, amongst them a pregnant woman, a teenager and many pensioners, was not only welcomed by a wide swathe of Ukrainians (Kiev restaurants offering roasted Colorado beetles comes to mind) but it constitutes the birthing act of the new Ukrainian nation, its identity forged in an act of pure evil which cements it as anti-Russia. In fact, and herein lies the irony and the secret of Ukrainian hatred, Ukraine cannot define itself as anything else besides an anti-Russia.

Numerous war crimes perpetrated by Ukrainian “punitive” battalions like Azov (again rebranded and hailed as heroes in the West), Aidar and the notorious Tornado-a bunch of Dirlewanger LARPers whose sole chance of serving a purpose in life is by becoming dogfood-were recorded in the immediate aftermath of Maidan, against combatants and Donbass civilians alike. Numerous war crimes against Russian soldiers were again recorded during the early days of the 2022 active phase of the war, while the punitive shelling of Donetsk, particularly whenever Ukraine faced a setback, continued, and continues unabated and with barely a mention on western media. Nowadays, calling Russians as ‘barbarians’ and/or ‘orcs’ is the norm amongst Ukrainian officials, on statements and tweets propagated again uncritically by western media, the same media that would revolt at the slightest racial slur targeted against other ethnicities (ok, cis white men being a somewhat distant exemption).

In stark contrast to all these, the vast majority of Russians, both the public and officials alike, continue to view the Ukrainians as prodigal brothers passing an acute but temporary phase from which they can be redeemed and return to the bosom of Russia, all this hatred supposedly being a historical aberration and not the new normality. Perhaps it is too traumatic a realization for Russia to make, but as long as it refuses to look at the enemy-Ukraine-in the eye for what it is, its chances of victory are slim. But that argument will be examined in more detail later. 

Ressentiment 

In the history of ideas, one may be surprised to find out that a lot of useful concepts of past times are often left forgotten, gathering dust like abandoned relics in a vault, whereas they would best serve in the here and now, explaining an often-perplexing reality that stubbornly eludes contemporary analytical tools. In the case of the hatred accumulated over the years by Ukraine, we will retrieve and use one such concept-that of ressentiment, popular in the revolutionary times-and times of terror-of the late 19th century, and in particular in its Nietzschean interpretation.

A definition is in order:

Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure on to an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be "blamed" for one's own inferiority/failure. Thus, one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external "evil."

Ressentiment is the birthing pool of slave morality, an inversion of all that is good and self-affirming occurring in the dark depths of a consciousness plagued by its own weakness and incompetency, the consciousness of a slave (a slave nation in Ukraine’s case) unable to create something good of himself, unable to create values for himself, unleashing a destructive rage upon his master and all that he created, seeking to erase him and thus erase the external stimuli that reminds the slave of his inferiority. It is essential to note that ressentiment has as a necessary precondition for its birth the presence of an ‘Other’, one understood-but never acknowledged!-as superior by the slave.

In the words of Nietzsche:

The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all, – its action is basically a reaction.

But it is not the same concept ‘good’; on the contrary, one should ask who is actually evil in the sense of the morality of ressentiment. The stern reply is: precisely the ‘good’ person of the other morality, the noble, powerful, dominating one, but re-touched, re-interpreted and reviewed through the poisonous eye of ressentiment.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality 

Russia is Ukraine’s essential ‘Other’ and the perfect scapegoat for its failures, notably Ukraine’s failure to establish anything resembling a functioning state after 1990. Ukraine cannot define itself outside Russia. It has no identity of its own to speak off, no creations to be proud off-saying ‘no’ to Russia and everything Russian is its sole creative deed-its Maidan ‘revolution’ itself is basically a reaction. All the hatred displayed by Ukraine nationalists, all that murderous rage arming their hands is a manifestation of their deep-rooted sense of inferiority over Russians and their real history as compared to the artificial Ukrainian one. 

This is evident in the beyond absurd and laughable interpretation of global history and prehistory, found in many Ukrainian school textbooks, where the views that an ancient Ukrainian culture supposedly existed back in the Bronze Age and ‘facts’ such that it was Ukrainians who invented the wheel, are overcompensation in extremis-the extreme situation here being the strained, perverted and pathologically frail Ukrainian slave mentality, desperately in need of some founding mythos, something tangible to fill the nothingness of its historical (un)reality. 

Ressentiment is the language and explanation of the victim-it is no accident that in the triumphant for the forces of liberalism, democracy, communism and (briefly) national socialism (all aspects of the same political program derived from the axioms of Progress) 20th and 21st centuries, using it as an analytical tool is unfashionable-it would attribute all the “achievements” of modern (western) societies to a perversion of superior morals stemming from a sense of inferiority of the masses for whom this world was constructed. 

Ukrainian brand of Ressentiment

The particular manifestation of Ukrainian ressentiment is the net force of three main historical vectors-the history of western-central Ukrainians as a subjugated people with a stillborn nationality and slave mentality, the inherently infantilized character of Ukrainian nationality and finally the zealotry of the neophyte. 

What was once a single people of the Kievan Rus’ kingdom, that is modern western-central Ukraine, after successive conquests by Mongols, Poles and Lithuanians had by the middle of the 17th century become alienated to its eastern counterparts who had created a state of their own with Moscow as its capital. Prolonged, centuries-long rule by foreigners and invaders instills upon a people a slave mentality that is nigh impossible to get rid off and western-central Ukrainians (exactly where the anti-Russian zealotry is mostly encountered) were plagued historically by this affliction. The rejoining of these lands with the rebirthed Russian state centered in Moscow and sole successor to the Kievan Rus’ with the Pereyaslav Agreement of 1654, is viewed today by Ukrainian nationalists as a form of subjugation, prolonging their enslavement, now to a new master. Thus, the slave mentality of the Ukrainians goes back many centuries, being an ideal ground for the blossoming of ressentiment while in distinct examples of irony it has now been willingly supplanted with self-imposed subjugation to their Western masters. The sight of the Motherland Monument in Kiev, a symbol of the entire land, symbolically clad in the flag of the United States to commemorate Independence Day is a perfect example whose irony eludes the ever-slavish citizens of the in-name-only capital of the state. 

A large part of contemporary Ukraine itself was for centuries known as Малороссия, literally “Little Russia”, Ukraine (na kraine) itself means the land on the border, it was not considered a separate cultural entity but merely a province of the Russian Empire. Amongst the Slav community of peoples, Ukrainians historically excelled as singers, jesters, actors-these were their signature professions-outside of course the ever present for all back in the day peasant life. Real creative work in the fields of literature, painting, philosophical or scientific work, the making of a culture in short, was essentially absent from Ukraine until perhaps the late 19th century. 

A jester and an artist of that variety has something of the child in him-otherwise he would simply not be one. The lack of gravitas, a view of life in the most superficial of terms, the character of a mime, an imitator by nature-that is a core part of the infantilized, lacking in historical depth Ukrainian character. But children can-especially when in a group-be exceptionally cruel towards their peers, and given the opportunity against their seniors. Their not-yet-formed consciousness, their limited understanding of matters of life and death and a lack of empathy, can propel them to acts of extreme violence with no heed of the ramifications of their actions. When an entire society depicts these traits, you get the instant popularity of the “who doesn’t jump is a Muscovite!”-a game for children essentially, popularized by teen protesters-but also its rapid and uncritical descent to “death to Muscovites!”, realized in practice against innocent civilians by the nominally adult Ukrainians. 

As for the final trait that catalyzes Ukrainian ressentiment, that is the zealotry of the neophyte. To counterbalance the foundational act of modern Ukraine’s, their radical rejection of everything Russian, Ukrainians simply shifted to another master, the West, slavishly and with a zealotry worthy of a fanatic, imitating everything western, which is perceived to embody everything ‘good’ as opposed to everything ‘bad’ represented by Russia, again betraying their inability for creative nation-building of their own. Recalling an incident during the 2014 Crimea operation, when a group of Ukrainian soldiers yelled to the Russian troops that entered their base “America is with us!” as if this was a magic word that would alter reality, is characteristic of this zealotry amounting to idolatry.

But fact is (and in contrast to what many western Russophiles and some well-intentioned Russian patriots hold dear) that Russia is indeed fundamentally in antithesis with not only contemporary Western ‘values’ but with the traditional Western worldview in general. Thus, by trying to adopt-the act of adopting is always incomplete and a travesty if it is not the product of organic historical processes, and this pertains not only to charlatan imitators like the Ukrainians, Baltic limitrophes or the Poles, but non-western countries like Greece, the Balkans or to an extent even western countries ‘left out’ historically like Italy-a western way of life, their anti-Russianness is further exacerbated to its limits.

The symbiotic relationship of Ukrainian ressentiment towards Russia and rampant western Russophobia is worthy of thorough study I believe, but some of its practical results revolve around the popular in contemporary liberal West campaigns of cancelation of that aspects of culture or those persons which certain privileged groups find offensive. As an example, we witness this gaining momentum with regards to Russian artists of past and present being either cancelled as offensive to poor little Ukrainians, or appropriated by them, claiming their heritage for their own. 

Inside Ukraine, this iconoclasm against Russian artists is better exemplified in the example of the Olympian Pushkin. But no matter how much Little Russians screech, no matter how many statues of him they topple with their little dirty shovels, Pushkin will forever be in the very small company of poets of global repute, firmly rooted to the Russian land but simultaneously elevated above the status of a national poet. Ukraine simply has no such example to offer.

How to combat Ukrainian hatred

Well, to combat this-as I hope was shown in the previous paragraphs-intrinsic and well rooted Ukrainian hatred, first thing is to acknowledge its existence, something Russian authorities have so far seemed incapable off, or at the very least unwilling to admit its existence to Russian citizens. Russia’s sole post-Soviet ‘ideology’ has been stability, often identified with the figure of Putin himself, an empty and self-defeating concept, mayhap in great demand after the catastrophic 90s but boring and a tool to doom an entire nation to apathy and the stillness of death, if not eventually supplanted by something inspiring-a vision for the future. Stability at all costs is in direct contradiction with a very dynamic, radical phenomenon as the ressentiment-born Ukrainian anti-Russianness, subverting more than 60 years of deeply rooted in Russian society beliefs, shared not only by the average citizen but by the ruling elites who are after all a product of the failed Soviet system.  

Perhaps if Putin wasn’t spending the Covid years in the Kremlin bunker reading Russo-Ukrainian history but instead bothered to browse the Ukrainian internet by say, making a proxy account with some impromptu name like P_Khuilo123 in one of the popular Ukrainian game servers and actively interact with the Kievan youth, he would have a better understanding of these fundamental transformations the Ukrainian society had underwent already, almost a decade after the Maidan coup. Instead, he relied on intelligence that was likely biased in order not to displease him, or simply flawed, made in the typical post-Soviet bureaucratic style of creating an artificial reality where officials pat each other in the back in a massive vicious circle-jerk aiming not in analytical clarity and excellence but in perpetuating the system, their place in it and their privileges. 

The results of Russia’s self-inflicted blindness were obvious in the first few days of the “special operation” and unfortunately it was Russian soldiers that suffered for them and not the said incompetent and corrupt officials. Both the way the “special operation” was conceived and executed, aimed at repeating the Crimea bloodless scenario on a much wider scale, and the rules of engagement given to Russian soldiers during the initial phase, perplexed them as to the nature of the operation and severely hampered their warfighting potential, in some cases making them sitting targets for their focused on a clear mission and blood thirsty (as any soldier should be) Ukrainian counterparts. 

The importance of psychological preparedness to kill in battle for the success of the war effort has been extensively documented and studied. The Kremlin sent Russian troops into Ukraine like it was some sort of light anti-terror, rescue the hostages type of operation, implying that the enemy soldiers, the ones that proved exceptionally willing and quite capable to kill said Russian troops and often subject them to torture and summarily execute them, were to a great degree hostages of the Kiev regime. This was a colossal mistake. 

So, how to combat Ukrainian hatred? Apparently, the Kremlin has chosen a mixture of steadfastness in the face of an implacable enemy, with rather limited but adaptable goals whereupon Russia will stand unwavering (but in a defensive/passive stance as befits Putin’s practice), absorbing everything Ukraine throws at it in almost “turn the other cheek style”, until Kiev’s capacity for war and its vast hatred somehow fizzle out. In my view this is a recipe for defeat, or at best, if it leads to victory it will continue to bare costs on innocent Russians that need not be born. Instead, a course of political/military goals informed by the mechanics of the root cause-Ukrainian ressentiment-could be integrated to Russian high strategy. 

Ukrainians’ hatred stems from their artificial sense of superiority and the perceived superiority of their western masters, and that is exactly what must be crushed for it to be made null and void. A decisive victory even after Ukraine has done all it could, has received all the fancy toys in the form of tanks and planes and missiles and.. the toddler asked from its parents-will be the cure. Anything else, any ‘cunning deal’ in the form of Minsk X will only fester the wound that breeds the hatred. Are Russians prepared and willing to go down that path? In another tidbit of irony, if they were what Ukrainians and westerners in their distorted imagination or just cynical propaganda portray them to be-barbaric orcs hellbent on destroying Ukraine-the war would have taken a very different turn. Can Russians “embrace the Orc” and emerge victorious? Can they do it by keep playing the “white knight”?

References

Russia as Ukraine’s Other: Identity and Geopolitics, Mikahil A.Molchanov, retrieved from: https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/55891

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Derussifiying Russian Art, Katya Sedgwick, retrieved from: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/derussifiying-russian-art/

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (New York, Back Bay Books, 1995)