Andrea Graziosi, professor of Naple’s University Federico II, in the day of 17 November 2022 gave a lectio about the contemporary war in Ukraine, in order to think critically about this situation in two prospectives: the past and the present.
This event was promoted by professors Di Nepi, Gentiloni and Longo of the degree course in Global Humanities of Sapienza University of Rome.
Andrea Graziosi started expressing the contents of his book called “L’Ucraina e Putin tra storia e ideologia”.
He told that history relates the past and gives sources to see critically the present society, but the future is unpredictable.
So people tend to see things based on the past but find it difficult to see things with a new point of view.
Then he declared that Ukrainian war is a European war. For this reason we have to answer two questions: Where Russia begins and ends and where Europe begins and ends? In fact this is a war which defines the borders of European Union and if it will be capable of deal with the problem of Russia and Ukraine as a real single state or not.
He continued talking about the past history of Russia in order to understand its purposes. In fact when the polar war ended in 1991, Russia could become one of the greatest country in the world but the Chinese boom changed the scenery and Usa adopted a policy of containment of China to anticipate its recognition as a great political force. So Russia developed an aggressive strategy in the attempt to become great again. He mentioned the fact that Putin doesn’t call the situation in Ukraine “war” but “special military operation”, because he doesn’t recognise Ukraine as a distinct state. So in his mind Ukraine people are Russian and are forced to recognise themselves as Russians.
He explained this talking about the history. In fact in the past out of Kiev three types people came out: great Russians, little Russians and White Russians (Byelorussian), that couldn’t produce different states. He remembered also that Russia didn’t exist before the end of XVIII century and its language was formalised in that period. As in Europe, the language is considered as the flag of a nation. So In the middle of XIX century in Ukraine started the process of differentiation of the language and Russia started to fear that Ukraine could become a different nation because of a different language. For this reason Russia imposed the Russian language as the formal veicolar language for a working career and Ukrainian language was declared a dialect, that’s why there are areas like Dombass that has the same alphabetisation as in Russia.
Then he started to analyse the reasons why Putin started this war. In fact in these past years Europe started to solidify its borders, introducing more countries near Russia as Poland, and Putin saw it as a creation of a Euroasian Union not a European Union. Another reason is the interpretation of 1991: in fact the end of Soviet Union was caused by Russians because they wanted to become independent and they were victims of the regime but time passed and people started to think about the end of Soviet Union as a humiliation and saw themselves as betrayed, disapproving capitalists counties like European Union and Usa. But at the same time they understood that Soviet Union was a failure and they wanted the great power status as a redemption. At the same time Russia developed the great pride of conquerer and dominator because of the victory in World War II.
Ukraine has a different story and it started with the divergences after 1991 not only of the language, but also of religion and constitution. In particular in opposition with the constitution of Russia, where a person has to declare himself as citizen and part of Russia, the Ukrainian constitution gives the liberty to remain and be who you are without restrictions. Also he remembered about the genocide that Ukrainian people suffered in peaceful time 1932-33 and see this as the reason why Ukraine will not accept another operation imposed by Russia and want to resist without running away.
In conclusion he said that the impact on Ukraine depends on European Union and Usa, even though the Past West is gone because the Brexit and other reasons, so the question is: are we able to create a New West?
Then he supposed two “peaceful” scenarios for the end of Ukrainian war (beside the nuclear option of Russia): an armistice which can be guaranteed only from Usa and China or a constant situation of instability like in Corea, with continuing controls of countries and undefined borders of European Union.