The Russian forces have invaded Ukraine. The European Union, the NATO, the United Nations and the USA – individually and collectively – have been unable to prevent the war between the two former Soviet Republics. How did it all start and who is responsible for this?

For students of politics and international relations a lot is available online, but most of it is from Western sources and about how the situation has evolved over the past few years. This article is an attempt to provide the curious Pakistani readers a lead on reading about the historical background to the current crisis. Russia and Ukraine have enjoyed centuries of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and political affinities. In the 20^th Century these relations were cemented further under the Soviet Union.

To understand the present scenario, it is beneficial to have a look at the region’s history of at least one hundred years. For a reader of English books, there is a plethora of material, but it is important to know the orientation of the writer in each case. For example, if you read the books of Leonard Schapiro (1908 – 1983), a British academic and scholar of Russian and Soviet politics, you should keep in mind that essentially he was an anti-Soviet propagandist who taught at the London School of Economics.

His books, The origins of the Communist Autocracy (1955) and The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union (1965) became standard textbooks in most Western universities teaching courses on Russia and the Soviet Union. They appeared scholarly but carried a lot of disinformation, a staple for Cold-War propaganda, due to Schapiro’s collaboration with the CIA. Despite their clearly anti-Soviet bias, Schapiro’s books help one understand a perspective that is different from the socialist or Marxist historians writing about Soviet history, without which it is hard to understand the political developments of the 21st Century.

Schapiro taught hundreds of students and many of them emerged as academics in their own right. TH Rigby and Archie Brown edited a book of essays in 1980 and dedicated it to Schapiro. Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR is a good collection of essays that helps one understand the power politics in the Soviet Union. Two of the essays contained in this book are particularly relevant to understanding how the system worked. Rigby’s essay, A Conceptual approach to authority, power, and policy in the Soviet Union, and Graeme Gill’s Political myth and Stalin’s quest for authority in the party, are particularly relevant to understanding how the authority of one person could shape national and international policies.

Putin is essentially following the pattern of politics established under Stalin and continued till the end of the one-party system in the Soviet Union. That brings us to another important book by Graeme Gill, The Collapse of a single-party system: The Disintegration of CPSU (1995). In this book, Gill gives us details about how the Soviet Communist Party lost its control ultimately leading to the collapse of the USSR and emergence on the world map of 15 independent countries including Ukraine. Both Rigby and Gill were Australians influenced by Schapiro.

To understand the present scenario, it is beneficial to cast a look at the region’s history of at least one hundred years. For a reader of English books, there is a plethora of material, but it is important to know the orientation of the writer in each case. 

EH Carr (1892 – 1982) was a British historian and journalist who wrote A History of Soviet Russia in 14 volumes. He was a proponent of socialist system and urged an Anglo-Soviet alliance as the basis of a post-war order. With this background we come to the post World War II period and see that the Soviet Communist Party had many senior leaders who were born in Ukraine. These included Khrushchev (head of the Communist Party and the USSR government), Kaganovich (deputy prime minister), Voroshilov (head of Soviet state and defense minister), Podgorny (head of state), Brezhnev (head of party and state), Tikhonov and Ryzhkov (prime ministers, and Fedorchuk (Soviet interior minister and the KGB chief).

These leaders spoke both the Russian and Ukrainian languages. This means that communist leaders from Ukraine played a significant role in the politics of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev had been the head of Soviet Ukraine from 1938 to 1949. Podgorny had served in that position from 1957 to 1963. Russian and Ukrainian communist leaders enjoyed a close relationship and the longest-serving head of Soviet Ukraine – Shcherbytsky (1972 – 1989) – was a close friend of Brezhnev’s. From 1985 onwards under Gorbachev, the Soviet power crumbled and Ukraine became independent in 1991. For the past 30 years, Russia’s relations with Ukraine have seen a roller-coaster ride.

To understand these developments, one of the best books is by Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (2010). Though it has a broad sweep covering the entire world, its last chapter is particularly useful to grasp how the Soviet Union disintegrated. After the USSR was dissolved, a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed and Ukraine became a part of it. The three founding members of the Soviet Union in 1922 were Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

The same Soviet Republics were the first three to sign the document to dissolve the USSR in December 1991. An interesting book about the immediate aftermath of the dissolution is by Stephen White, Russia’s New Politics: The management of a Post-communist Society (2000). For those wanting to read about the post-Soviet successor states including Ukraine, perhaps the best book is by John Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (1994). Finally, for a brief sketch of the origin of this crisis, Bloomsbury’s World Conflicts: Why and where they are happening, a short guide by Patrick Brogan is wonderful. It says on Page 389:

“The decisive event in the final breakup of the Soviet Union was the secession of Ukraine. It was the second most populous and second richest of Soviet Republics and was also the one with the oldest links to Russia. Kiev, not Moscow, is the mother city of the Russias. Ukraine was conquered by the czars in a long series of wars from the 16^th to the 18^th Centuries. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great drove out the Ottoman Turks, but Ukrainians were only admitted to partnership with the Russians in the great imperial expansion of the 19^th Century if they renounced their own nationality.”

This pretty much sums up the Russian attitude towards Ukraine. I can’t not recommend one more book from my collection, The nationalities question in the post-Soviet states by Graham Smith (1996). A lot more material is available online but most of it is one-sided. Nobody can justify what Putin has done, but all developments must be seen in the proper context.

The writer is an educationist based in Islamabad. He can be reached at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk and tweets @NaazirMahmood