Ukraine: Europe?s Linchpin: Preserving Independence

John Edwin Mroz and Oleksandr Pavliuk

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 1996

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Summary:  Ukraine has yet to solve the challenge of life after communism. Hyperinflation is just a memory and democracy is well entrenched, but production is declining, state industries remain unsold, and investors have largely stayed away. With nationalists ascendant in Russia, Ukraine needs Western money and diplomatic backing to preserve its independence and keep reform on track. A free, democratic Ukraine can serve as a model for Russia, prevent a new Soviet Union, and promote stability among its neighbors. A civil war between its Russified east and its more Ukrainian west, or its absorption into a new Russian empire, would reverberate throughout Europe.

John Edwin Mroz is President of the Institute for EastWest Studies. Oleksandr Pavliuk is a Program Associate in the Institute?s European Security Program.

Five years after independence, Ukraine watches the nationalist turn in neighboring Russia with unease bordering on alarm. Much of the Russian political spectrum, obsessed with reclaiming great power status and reuniting the former Soviet republics, recognizes that Ukraine is the key to its plans and openly espouses reabsorption. President Boris Yeltsin, instrumental in the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, has, in his quest for votes, adopted much of the nationalist agenda; he has dismissed his Western-oriented foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, cracked down on the rebellion in Chechnya, and pursued formal union with Belarus. Continued progress in Ukraine toward democracy and free markets will be more difficult no matter who triumphs in Russia?s presidential election in June. A victory for Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist Party boss and the leading presidential contender, would give Ukraine?s communists a second wind and could well throw Ukraine back into the instability that preceded reform.

With a landmass equal to France, a population of 52 million, a location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, large agricultural and high-tech industries, and extensive natural resources, Ukraine is crucial for the stability of the continent, and uncertainty there would reverberate throughout Europe. An independent, democratic, and reform-oriented Ukraine can provide a model for Russia?s development, prevent the emergence of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a political and military alliance under Moscow?s control, and promote stability in Central and Eastern Europe. The next year?s events in Ukraine will determine whether the continent continues on its path toward integration or faces a new confrontational divide.

Regardless of the outcome of Russia?s presidential contest, Ukraine has ample reason to suspect Moscow?s long-term intentions. Russia has refused to negotiate the exact borders between the two states. The Duma has not annulled its 1993 resolution declaring Sevastopol a Russian city, nor has it canceled its order to review the 1954 transfer of Crimea from Russia to the Ukraine. Most recently, it proclaimed illegal the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In fact, many Russians believe that Ukraine?s leaders, not its people, have been the impediment to closer relations, if not union, between the two countries.

But a majority of Ukrainians would not voluntarily agree to union with Russia. Ukrainians in the country?s west have long associated domination by Moscow with political oppression and economic decline. Despite forces in eastern Ukraine that favor reintegration, nationalist sentiment has grown throughout the rest of the country. The prospect of again being a provincial outpost of Moscow does not appeal to Ukrainians, who contrast that scenario with improving conditions in neighboring countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Ukrainians in the eastern, Russified areas have demonstrated in the two elections since independence that they will vote for the candidate best able to improve their economic situation. Thus in 1991 a majority of the eastern region voted to secede from the Soviet Union because an independent Ukraine seemed to offer better economic opportunities, but in 1994 a majority, judging that the Russian economy had ...

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