In retrospect, Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (2021) is meant to lay out a justification of an encroachment upon the territory of Ukraine. The article is published on the Kremlin’s website on 12 July 2021, at 17:00. The invasion of the territory of Ukraine commenced on 24 February 2022. In what follows, I examine the form of justification applied in Putin’s article for the invasion of Ukraine, in comparing this form of justification to the one given in the case of the peopling of the Israelites of the land of Canaan, as discussed in the Book of Genesis.
Notably, I shall refrain from positively applying the Kremlin’s terminology of “a special military operation,” which I would consider an operation of military conquest upon the territory of Ukraine. In fact, the content of Putin’s article would seem to support that view, given that the argument put forth may be applied in the form of a justification of conquest. However, the use of the term “special military operation” is not without purpose and value in the framework of the justification in question, proceeding on the assumption of the ethnic homogeneity of the Russian and Ukrainian populations.
What remains intriguing in Putin’s article is the form of justification applied in it, viz., one relying on the idea of an indistinguishable ethnicity of the Russian and Ukrainian populations. A rift in the ethnic pool would be due to the influence of external political forces, namely, the western powers. As it happens, Putin (2021) does not so much accentuate NATO expansion as an artificial divide in the ethnic cohesion of the Russian and Ukrainian populations, manufactured by the western powers, in their taking advantage of a political situation and Russia’s own failures in the past.
Now, Putin (2021) puts forth an historical account for the ethnic unity of the Russian and Ukrainian populations. Russians and Ukrainians, in Putin’s (2021) rendition, are one people, unified through culture and historically bound, subsisting within the same historical and spiritual sphere, which, alas, has been divided by the deliberate influence of the western powers, as a “consequence of our own mistakes made at different periods of time.” Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the ruling class justifies the independence of the country through a denial of its past and the rewriting of history, e.g., in portraying the Holodomor as a genocide (Putin, 2021).
The historicity presented in Putin’s article is to maintain the political union of Kyiv and Moscow, favoring the eventual incorporation of the former in the latter. In his attempt to illustrate the historical unity of the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, Putin (2021) recounts the history of Kievan Rus, in which Kyiv, as the dominant political entity, adopted the Christian religion within the Orthodox tradition. Further, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the territory of the Russian state was extended to include Kyiv, Ukrainian lands on the left bank of the Dnieper River, and eventually Crimea. As Putin (2021) recalls, the war between Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth culminated in the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, in 1686, whereby Moscow again incorporated Kyiv as well as present-day Ukrainian lands, which came to be known as Malorossia (Little Russia). Crimea and Black Sea territories, then, were annexed by Russia following the wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. These became known as Novorossiya (New Russia).
To bring to the fore his historical view, Putin (2021) notes the Old Russian term “okraina,” which signifies “periphery,” in referring to frontiers or border territories; the nominal understanding of “Ukraine,” Putin (2021) maintains, commonly being derived from this term. This conceptualization, however, would seem to defy the etymology of the term “Ukraine,” which derives, rather, from the East Slavic word “ukraina,” referring to borderlands, though denoting a distinctive territory. Still, the reader of Putin’s article is left with the impression that “Ukraine” implies a border territory of another entity.
Given this historical account, Putin (2021) stresses that the present-day political situation in Ukraine presents an existential risk to Russia, in terms of the Russian ethnicity. The current political situation requires a change of identity, such that ethnic Russians in Ukraine are forced to deny their own identity and ethnic background. Moreover, ethnic Russians are forced to oppose Russia as the enemy. As Putin (2021) decries, an ethnic assimilation within a hostile Ukrainian state “is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.” The Russian population, as a result of ethnic assimilation within a hostile Ukrainian state, will decrease even “by millions.”
This argument, in hindsight, is to lay a groundwork for a justification of an assault on Ukraine in reference to ethnicity, language (Old Russian), religion (the Orthodox faith), culture, and a history within Ukrainian geography. It is a form of a genetic justification of conquest. In carrying out its “special military operation” within Ukraine, Russia is in fact responding to an artificial division between Russia and Ukraine sowed by the West, which has taken advantage of an historical situation.
A genetic justification of political power claims the right of a population to the use of that power. Applied in terms of conquest, a right is claimed for a population to the use of political power for the sake of its preservation and security. In an area of political conflict, a genetic justification for the possession of political power refers to the right of a certain population to exert that power within a particular territory over another population. This form of justification, thus, may be applied in the case of conquest, that is, where one population encroaches upon the territory of another.
Let us now compare two modes of a genetic justification of conquest, one employed by Putin in his Kremlin article and the other in Genesis for the sake of the Israelites to populate in Canaan. These modes, while operating on the same axiom of the survival and security of a population, proceed by inverse arguments.
A justification of conquest, in reference to a unique population, denotes the preservation and security of the population within a conquered territory (or a territory to be conquered), in which the vanquished reside as a separate population. This form of a genetic justification of conquest is consistent with the foundation of Israel, in which patriarchal power was sustained through the Abrahamic lineage. The foundation of Israel, however, stipulated a caveat, viz., not to procreate amongst the people of Canaan, all the land of which had been granted to Abraham and his seed, namely, “the land wherein thou art a stranger,” for an everlasting possession (Gen. 12.7, 13.17, 17.8).
In accordance with God’s grant to Abraham, Isaac and his son Jacob did not procreate amongst the Canaanites but within their own kindred. Abraham had instructed Eliezer, the senior servant of his house, to find a suitable woman for his own son, Isaac, from his own homeland, in the city of Haran, Mesopotamia. The woman, according to Abraham’s instructions, should not be one of the daughters of the Canaanites, following God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 24.1-9). “Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites” (Gen. 24.3), Abraham instructs Eliezer, but one from Abraham’s own kindred. Eliezer, then, discovers Rebekah, the future wife of Isaac, in the city of Haran, within the lineage of Abraham’s brother, Nahor. As Rebekah departs from her home, in the city of Haran, towards the land of Canaan, to become Isaac’s wife, her family leaves her with a foreboding message, “[L]et thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them” (Gen. 24.60).
In the same vein, Isaac summons his son, Jacob, and commands him, “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan” (Gen. 28.1). Instead, Jacob ought to go to the house of Bethuel, his mother Rebekah’s father, and take a wife from the daughters of Laban, his mother Rebekah’s brother (Gen. 28.2). Thus, Isaac gives Jacob and his seed the blessing of Abraham, “that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham” (Gen. 28.4).
Now, in his A Dialogue between a Philosopher and Student of the Common Laws of England (1840), Hobbes discusses the conquest of Israel by a natural right for the sake of the preservation of the Israelites. The children of Israel had a right by the law of nature (or an immediate command from God) to dispossess the Cananites, that is, to preserve their lives, as they would have been unable to subsist otherwise. Their preservation as well as their need for security provided a justification for “invading those whom they have just cause to fear” (E.W. vol. VI, p. 148).
The justification for possessing the land of the Canaanites, further, is rooted in genealogy, namely, the curse of Canaan, the father of the Canaanites. Canaan was the son of Ham, but Canaan was cursed, whereas Ham, the son of Noah, had witnessed his father Noah naked in a drunken stupor and communicated the event to his brothers (Gen. 9.22). Ham’s brothers, Shem and Japheth, then covered the nakedness of their father, without looking upon it (Gen. 9.23). Canaan was to become “a servant of servants […] to his brethren,” (Gen. 9.25) that is, to Shem and Japheth, the brothers of Ham (Gen. 9.26-7).
A genetic justification for a dispossession of the land of the Canaanites proceeds from an argument of preservation and security as well as a separation of lineages. In the case of Russian aggression upon Ukrainian territory, the mode of justification, put forth by Putin (2021), rests upon an argument of preservation and security but, conversely, denotes a genetic background in the context of which the Russian and Ukrainian populations are unified. For Putin (2021), an ethnic dissimilation of the Russian population, by a hostile Ukrainian state, provides a justification on the grounds of a genetic argument, in the aim of preservation and security. Still, Putin (2021) does not adopt a form of justification, on which grounds the Russian and Ukrainian populations are considered separate. They are merely separated by artificial means, which the enemy has supplied in his favor, contra Russia.
Putin (2021) employs an alternative form of a genetic justification, operating on the maxim of the sameness of the Russian and Ukrainian populations. The vanquished reside within a territory belonging to, and they subsist as a part of the same population as, the conquerors. This justification, we may infer, lays the groundwork of a rationale for the present-day Russo-Ukrainian war. The Ukrainian population is considered indistinguishable from the Russian population, and Ukrainian history and culture are considered a part of Russian history and culture. A hostile Ukrainian state would, in fact, set Russians against Russians.
Both forms of justification rely on an argument of the preservation and security of a population, but for Putin, the argument is grounded upon the preservation and security of the conquerors as well as the vanquished, whereas for the Israelites, the preservation and security of the original population, namely, that of the conquerors, suffices.
While the Kremlin’s justification of its aggression upon Ukrainian territory maintains a reference to national and historical unity, the Russian and Ukrainian identities are separated in terms of propaganda in the course of the war. Zelensky envisions Ukraine and the Ukrainian identity without Russia. In a Telegram post (11 September 2022), addressing the Kremlin, Zelensky portrayed an ethnic unity with Russia as the worst of evils. “Do you still think we are “one people”?” Zelensky asks. He continues: “Without gas or without you? without you. Without light or without you? without you. Without water or without you? without you. Without food or without you? without you.” For Zelensky, the Ukrainian identity obtains inextricably “without Russia.”
The discontinuity of identity need not, however, be considered a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rather, Russia’s encroachment upon Ukrainian territory may have unveiled a discontinuity of identity, where ethnic unity may otherwise have been presumed. A separation of identities is now asserted within the context of an existential conflict, where annihilation, for Zelensky, is preferable to living in unity with Russia.
In a grandfatherly tone, however, Putin (2021) states that Russia has never been and will never be antithetical to Ukraine; the identity of the country being for its citizens to decide. The Ukrainians, contradictorily, have become the Canaanites, by their own determination, a generational separation of the Russian and Ukrainian populations now being symbolized by the destruction of the dam of Nova Kakhovka, once a physical bond between the two Slavic nations.
References:
Hobbes, Thomas. 1840. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Vol. VI. A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England. London: John Bohn, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.
Holy Bible, The. King James Version (authorized). Containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty’s special command. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Putin, Vladimir. (12 July, 2021). “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Zelensky, Volodymyr. (11 September, 2022). Telegram: https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/3203