Introduction and table of contents to The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution by Nicolai N. Petro. Forthcoming, 2023

Petro, Nicolai N.

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University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Political Science Faculty Publications Political Science 2022 Introduction to The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution Nicolai N. Petro University of Rhode Island, npetro@uri.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/psc_facpubs Citation/Publisher Attribution Petro, Nicolai N.. "Introduction to The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution." , (2022). https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/psc_facpubs/37 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@etal.uri.edu. Nicolai N. PetroThe Tragedy of UkraineWhat Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict ResolutionISBN 978-3-11-074324-1e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-074337-1e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-074347-0ISSN 2747-5689Library of Congress Control Number: 2022944100Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche NationalbibliothekThe Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/BostonCover image: maxsyd / iStock / Getty Images PlusPrinting and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leckwww.degruyter.comJustice tilts the scale to give learning to those who suffer.Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 250.ContentsList of Figures and Tables IXAcknowledgements XIIntroduction XIIIA Note on Transliteration XVIIChapter OneWhat Does Athens Have to Do with Kiev? 1. The Dionysia: Classical Greek Theater as a Political Institution 3. How Tragedy Created Better Citizens 5. How Modern Politics Lost Sight of Tragedy 11. Tragedy and the Limits of Modern Political Realism 16. What Tragedy Has to Offer Modern Politics 21. Applying Tragedy’s Untapped Potential to Ukraine 31Chapter TwoTwo Nations in One State 36. Debating the Origins of Rus 37. How Ukraine Joined the Russian Empire 40. Maloross Ukraine under Russian Rule: Shulgin vs. Hrushevsky 44. Galician Ukraine under Austro-Hungarian Rule: The PoliticalDebate 48. Maloross and Galician Responses to the Collapse of Empire 51. 1991: A Flawed Independence 70Chapter ThreeThe Fatal Attraction of the Far Right 90. The Parliamentary Far Right: Svoboda (Freedom Party) 91. The Extra-Parliamentary Far Right: The Right Sector 94. The Maidan in Power: Mainstreaming the Far Right 106. Searching for a Better Nationalism 120Chapter FourThe Mental Habits of Nationalism 124. Patriotism versus Nationalism 129. The Nationalist Struggle to Vaccinate Ukraine 136. The Consequences of Economic Nationalism 142. Jacob and Esau in Ukraine: Culture and Religion as Sources of SocialDisunity 163Chapter FiveThe Tragedies of Crimea and Donbass 174. Crimea’s Quest for Autonomy 178. The Donbass Difference 201. Is There No Escape from Tragedy? 220Chapter SixA Flawed Peace 223. From Geneva to Minsk: Why Peace Failed 224. Domestic Peace Proposals 235. How Cleft Societies Can Be Made Whole 247. Truth and Reconciliation: A Model for Ukraine? 253. Afterword: The Lessons of Tragedy 265Index 275VIII ContentsList of Figures and TablesMap 2.1: Electoral Divisions in Ukraine (1994–2019).Figure 4.1: Private Transfers to Ukraine Compared to FDI in Billions of USD (2012–2017).Figure 5.1: Regions Asked “What is Your Homeland?” (January 2013).Table 2.1: Percentage of the Electorate Approving the 1991 “Act of Independence.”Table 2.2: How Important for Ukraine Is the Problem of Developing the Ukrainian Language?(September 2020).Table 3.1: President Petro Poroshenko on the Ukrainian Fifth Column.Table 3.2: Ukrainian Officials on the Treasonous Nature of Maloross Ukrainians.Table 4.1: The Cycle of Tragedy and Healing.Table 4.2: Ukraine’s Projected Debt Repayment Schedule (2019).Table 4.3: Number of Ukrainians Receiving Russian Citizenship (2017–2020).Table 4.4: What Language Do Ukrainians Ages 14–29 Speak at Home? (2018).Table 5.1: Donetsk Referendum and Lugansk Opinion Poll of March 27, 1994.Table 5.2: Donetsk and Lugansk Referenda of May 11, 2014.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110743371-001AcknowledgementsOver the decade that it has taken me to write this book, I have received generousassistance from many different sources. My debt begins with the Ukrainian Acad-emy of Sciences and Ukrainian Forum, which first invited me to visit Kiev in2008. Two years later, Vladimir Karazin National University in Kharkov arrangedfor me to give a series of talks there. The US Fulbright Commission sponsored meon a Fulbright to Ilya Mechnikov National University in Odessa, Ukraine for theacademic year 2013–2014, where then Rector Igor N. Koval, Dean Viktor Glebov,and Professor Volodymyr Dubovyk graciously organized several lectures for me.The Universities of Pisa and Bologna in Italy not only offered me opportuni-ties to speak, but also invited me to participate in the supervision of three grad-uate theses dealing with Ukraine. This culminated, in 2021, in a Visiting Fellow-ship at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Bologna, where Ifirst presented three lectures that later became the foundation for this book. Sub-sequent speaking engagements at Brown, Johns Hopkins, the Monterey SummerSymposium on Russia, Fairfield University, the Austrian International Institutefor Peace, and the Research Center of Post-Soviet Countries in Moscow, all help-ed me to further refine my arguments.Unsparing financial assistance was provided by the University of Rhode Is-land, which not only funded two year-long sabbatical leaves, most of which werespent in Ukraine, but also helped defray the costs of copyediting and indexingthrough competitive awards from the URI Center for Humanities and the URI Pro-vost’s Office. Special thanks go to Michaela Goebels, De Gruyter’s Book ContentEditor, for shepherding this book through to publication.Finally, no words can ever adequately express my debt to my wife, Allison,who patiently endured my many weekends writing, media interviews at all hoursof the day, and long stays overseas, often in less than ideal circumstances. Hav-ing been married to her for nearly forty years, I can honestly say that this is ourbook.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110743371-002IntroductionI have been following events in Ukraine since 2008, when I was invited to give atalk by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and participated in a panelchaired by former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.¹ Since then, my wife andI have visited Ukraine almost every year.While there we traveled widely, fascinat-ed by the country’s rich history and regional diversity. In 2013 I was awarded aFulbright research award to go to Ukraine for the entire academic year. It provedto be a fateful year, with the Maidan protests beginning just three months afterour arrival. My original research agenda, which was to explore the role of theRussian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, quickly fell by the wayside as I struggledto understand what was taking place around me.The most popular view then, as now, is that the country’s post-Maidan crisisis entirely the result of Russian aggression. What makes this explanation lessthan complete, however, is that Ukraine’s historical and cultural divisions arewell established, and have been a prominent theme in scholarly writing aboutthe country. It is hard to imagine how they could suddenly be divorced from cur-rent events. I therefore agree with Mykola Riabchuk (with whom I agree on littleelse) that, “the problem remains to find the essence of the Ukrainian discord thatcannot be exclusively attributed to Russian subversion or even invasion.”² To mymind, this means paying more, not less, attention to Ukraine’s historical and cul-tural diversity.I had no satisfactory framework for explaining the intensity and persistenceof the country’s internal discord, however, until I stumbled upon Richard NedLebow’s book, The Tragic Vision of Politics.³ In it, I recognized processes compa-rable to those I had witnessed in Ukraine – passionate nationalism and revolu-tionary zeal, followed by the repudiation of sound policy options and the rise ofsocial tensions. Lebow’s classic work focuses on international relations, but I feltconfident that approaching Ukrainian society through the lens of classical Greektragedy would reveal many of the same underlying social pathologies.Further study of classical Greek tragedy led me to the conclusion that a trag-ic political cycle can manifest itself in a number of different ways. Social decline, “Security and Development Strategies in 21st Century,” November 13–14, 2008 in Kiev, Uk-raine, sponsored by the Ukrainian Forum and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Mykola Riabchuk, “‘Two Ukraines’ Reconsidered: The End of Ukrainian Ambivalence?,” Stud-ies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, April 22, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12120. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2003).https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110743371-003for example, is often foreshadowed by the increasing shrillness of domestic po-litical discourse and the demonization of one’s domestic opponents. Anotherprominent feature is the rise of nationalism, which can itself become a form ofcollective psychosis. But despite classical Greek tragedy’s value for gaining in-sight into the emotional roots of conflict, modern political science seems tohave entirely forgotten that its most important function was to heal societyand to reconcile former enemies; in other words to assist in conflict resolution.This provided me with the missing piece of the puzzle. The essence of theUkrainian discord, to use Riabchuk’s felicitous phrase, lay in the state’s reluc-tance to recognize the Other Ukraine – the third of the population that regardsits own Russian cultural identity as compatible with a Ukrainian civic identity –as a legitimate part of the Ukrainian nation. Today’s tragic events thus form partof a much larger tragic cycle that has befuddled Ukrainian political elites for overa century. This cycle is fed by the destructive narratives that one side tells aboutthe other, which then legitimize conflict in the name of achieving justice. Trap-ped by their insistence on correcting the injustices of the past before engaging indialogue, both sides have unwittingly contributed to the perpetuation of theirmutual tragedy.My discussion of the role that tragedy has played in Ukraine’s social discord,and the role that it can play in its healing, proceeds as follows. Chapter One re-minds readers of the unique social and therapeutic impact of tragedy during theheyday of Athenian democracy – the fifth century BCE. After describing howtragedy sought to transform Athenians into better and more compassionate citi-zens, it explores why modern political science abandoned tragedy, and con-cludes by suggesting that a tragic vision of politics has untapped potential forhealing Ukraine.Chapter Two delves deeply into the recurring cycle of Ukrainian tragedy,showing how it is linked to nationalism. It describes several key historical nar-ratives that divide eastern and western Ukraine, and how they are still beingused today to manipulate political and social discourse in Ukraine.Chapter Three explores the appeal of Far Right nationalism in Ukraine,which rests on its claim that only nationalism can guarantee national unity. I de-scribe how the mainstreaming of the Far Right after 2014 has instead intensifiedthe social conflict between eastern and western Ukraine, and suggest that repub-lican patriotism, which has its origins in a very different sense of communityfrom nationalism, might be more effective for achieving national unity.Chapter Four describes the concrete damage that nationalism has done insuch areas of national policy as healthcare, economics, culture, and religion,while Chapter Five looks at the impact that nationalism has had on Ukraine’s ge-opolitical and security interests. I argue that, while the territorial loss of CrimeaXIV Introductionand parts of Donbass were due to Russia’s military intervention, its psychologi-cal origins can be traced to three decades of nationalist policies that alienatedthe local population.In the final chapter I review efforts to bring peace to Ukraine. These fall intotwo broad categories: external efforts, like the Minsk Accords, and internal ef-forts, like the National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity. Both failed to ach-ieve peace because they did not include any mechanisms for fostering socialhealing among Ukrainians themselves. I suggest that a Ukrainian Truth and Rec-onciliation Commission could provide such mechanisms.Russia’s 2022 invasion began just as I was putting the finishing touches onthe final chapter. It confirmed some parts of my analysis, while forcing me to re-evaluate others. Most importantly, it confirmed my view of politics as a tragiccycle propelled by mutual fear and the loss of the ability to communicate.This suggests to me that no matter how the military conflict is resolved, it willnot bring an end to Ukraine’s tragic cycle unless the country’s elites also recog-nize how their own actions are contributing to its perpetuation.Recurring conflict is as much a problem of the heart, as it is of institutions,and the enduring value of classical Greek tragedy is that it seeks to induce achange of heart, a catharsis. Oedipus was blinded by his anger long before helaid hands upon himself, and only began to see truly when he lost his outwardsight, and was forced to look inward. It is my hope that by drawing attention tothe tragic cycle that entangles them, more Ukrainians will be encouraged to lookinward. That is where they will find the compassion and forgiveness needed forreconciliation.Kingston, Rhode Island Nicolai N. PetroOdessa, UkraineIntroduction XV  For purchase options, please visit:  http://amzn.to/3UC8xcn

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