Dysgenics of the Limitrophe

 

"Ukrainian" parliamentarian Zhan Beleniuk meets with "Ukrainian" figurehead Volodymyr Zelensky

With NATO’s proxy war against Russia ongoing in Ukraine, no consensus prevails as to whether Ukraine, or parts of Ukraine, rightfully constitute an independent land and nation, part of “the West”, or merely politically disconnected outliers of Greater Russia. In his eccentric and awkwardly titled 2016 book Corruption in Ukraine: Rulers’ Mentality and the Destiny of the Nation, Geophilosophy of Ukraine, Ukrainian academic Oleg Bazaluk approaches Ukraine’s uniquely troubled existence from the perspective of an interdisciplinary study of the country’s geophilosophy, combining analysis of interrelated geographic, historical, geopolitical, sociological, and psychological considerations. 

Ukraine’s tragedy, in Bazaluk’s judgment, derives from its situation as a limitrophe state between two rival civilizations, that of Western Europe and that of Russia, which is “reasonably named Byzantine-Asian culture”. For him, “Ukrainians are more Rus than the Russians are”, with modern Russian civilization being distinguished by an “Asian layer” as important as Orthodoxy to its constitution [1]. “With each generation of occupation by the Mongols, all Eastern Slavs became more different,” he argues [2], so that “in this culture, Ukraine, with its inexhaustible desire to restore the greatness of the culture of Kyivan Rus and to prove its historical significance, is a foreign body, pathology, with which Moscow either reconciles or tries to move away.” [3] Bazaluk makes a distinction between the “Asian layers” present in Russia and Ukraine, which he uses pejoratively, and the high culture of East Asia [4]; instead, Russians and Ukraine’s corrupt political elite exhibit the mentality of “Wild Asians” [5].

Within Ukraine, Bazaluk delineates three regions corresponding to civilizational spheres, Western Ukraine being the most like Western Europe, Southeastern Ukraine having more in common with the Byzantine-Asian civilization, and Central Ukraine comprising a compromise between the two. “Western Ukraine was very different from the southeastern region in terms of religiosity,” he suggests, arguing that “Western Ukraine was sincerely religious” [6], whereas “priests became more impudent” in Southeastern Ukraine under the Moscow patriarchate [7]. Typically depicting Ukraine’s Russian pole in negative terms, he claims that Southeastern Ukraine grasps for luxury, whereas Western Ukraine is characterized by thrift [8]. Meanwhile, Central Ukraine, which the author offers as the quintessential expression of the Ukrainian character, is hardworking and pious [9]. Departing from what Bazaluk asserts to be a recurring desire on the part of Ukrainians to establish their sovereignty as an independent locus of civilization, “Ukrainians of the southeastern region could not imagine life without Russians, and without the alliance with Russia.” [10] Indicative of the vagueness and fluidity of Ukrainian identity, however, Bazaluk admits that he himself grew up in some uncertainty as to his own heritage between the competing ethnic inheritances [11].

Ukraine’s misfortune has been to occupy a high-energy frontier, or line of ethnopolitical tension, between the West and Russia, with the country consequently witnessing waves of conflict that ravaged its population. Historically, the drive for national independence has been the mission of “the Cossack clan that was always freedom loving, proud and enlightened” [12], but Bazaluk regrets that after centuries of wars and unending sacrifices the “brightest part disappeared” from the nation’s genetic stock [13], leaving Ukraine bereft of a natural pool from which to draw great leaders. Instead, Bazaluk contends, the noble and knightly archetype of the Cossack has been displaced by that of the “swineherd” [14], with a psychology “of rejection of the better, indifference to the present, and cowardice before authority” [15]. With the NATO-backed regime of the Jew Volodymyr Zelensky making use of “meat ramparts” to defend against Russian advances [16] and uselessly shoveling Ukrainian manpower into eternity by way of the Wagner Group’s “Bakhmut Meat Grinder” [17], for example, and the Spring-Summer 2023 counteroffensive subsequently failing to turn the tide, with still more sausage-links of Ukrainians needlessly strung in their thousands to satisfy a neoconservative agenda, the dysgenic trajectory of the Ukrainian nation-state only appears to have accelerated.

“Fear of power, which was genetically predetermined from history,” Bazaluk claims, would shape Ukraine’s post-independence development in the nineties and after [18], with no great leaders emerging from the chaos. So precipitous was the country’s decline under marketization, and so uninspired were the people by the country’s governance, that the Communist Party saw gains in the 1998 parliamentary elections [19]. A succession of oligarchical organized-crime coalitions retained their collective grip on the reins of power, however, with Ukraine accruing a reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world – this despite Bazaluk’s assertion that the “Ukrainian nation, on the eve of its independence, had nothing to do with corruption.” [20]

Ukrainian nationalism, to the extent that it manifested, did not inspire policy so much as serve as a rhetorical fog to hide politicians’ motives of personal enrichment [21], and under Leonid Kuchma, who served as Ukraine’s president from 1994 to 2005, “nationalist sentiment was limited to general statements” [22]. “All three clans [i.e., major business-political coalitions] put emphasis on the values of the Byzantine-Asian culture, had a similar way of thinking, and the same vision of the future of Ukraine,” he insists [23], with even a pro-West politician like Petro Poroshenko, president from 2014 to 2019, expressing “Byzantine-Asian” culture in his “morbid craving for honours and awards” [24]. “However, unlike the Russians,” he writes, “in the Ukrainian ‘ruling elite’, patriotism and professionalism was completely absent,” relegating Ukraine “to the role of the ‘younger brother’ of the Russian Federation.” [25]

Oleg Bazaluk

“The probability of building a state according to international standards with such rulers equals zero,” writes Bazaluk [26], who holds that Ukraine’s corruption is of such a scale that it constitutes a factor of geopolitical ramifications [27]. Giving an indication of the scope of the degradation of public life, he reveals that out of “the 450 deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine 8th convocation that were elected after the [2014] Revolution of Dignity and during the war against the Russian Federation, more than 350 deputies have [a] corrupt past” [28]. “Places in the Verkhovna Rada can be purchased,” he continues: “The cost of a place ranges from $500,000 to $6,000,000!” [29] Moreover, “every year under Poroshenko and [US State Department creature Victoria Nuland’s appointee Arseniy] Yatsenyuk,” a Jewish businessman who served as Ukraine’s Prime Minister from 2014 to 2016, “about 500 to 690 billion UAH [Ukrainian Hryvnia] disappear, or rather, [are] illegally taken out of the national economy! This amount is equivalent,” Bazaluk explains, “to the entire budget of Ukraine together with the Pension Fund” [30].

After the Second World War, with Soviet power firmly entrenched in Eastern Europe and Ukraine consequently “plunged deep into Byzantine-Asian culture”, the high-energy frontier between the West and the Russian sphere had shifted from Ukraine to Germany, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, allowing Ukraine “opportunities for rest and recovery of its potential” [31]. Mikhail Gorbachev, in relinquishing Soviet control in Eastern Europe, shifted the tension of the frontier back toward Ukraine, which again became a contested space [32]. “The struggle for power and money had eclipsed reason of Ukrainian politicians” after independence, Bazaluk observes, “and they began to artificially worsen the frontier energy, opposing not only two world cultures, but also the Ukrainians, many of whom were still undecided on their cultural identity.” [33] West-aligned politicians Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko “caused serious damage to Ukraine’s integration with regard to the western civilisation, because the citizens of Ukraine associated the values of Western culture with the [poor] moral character of the leaders of the [2004-2005] Orange Revolution,” Bazaluk frets [34], continuing:

Under Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk [i.e., from 2014 onward], through government-controlled media holdings, a false stereotype began to be imposed on the Ukrainians: “The worse to Russia, the better to Ukraine”. Thus, with this post-colonial syndrome, the current Ukrainian rulers are trying to divert the Ukrainians’ attention from their corruption, incompetence, and irresponsibility, and thanks to that, they have turned Ukraine into an even poorer state than under [Viktor] Yanukovych [Ukraine’s president from 2010 until the US-backed 2014 Maidan coup]. [35]

The Maidan uprising, in Bazaluk’s view, witnessed the return of “the psychology of the Great Cossack family” as the “disobedience of students was the crest of a wave, in the base of which two world civilisations clashed.” [36] The leadership failed to deliver on its potentials, however, so that Ukraine again fell short of establishing itself as an independent locus. Bazaluk’s vision, when he permits himself to be optimistic, is a Ukrainian “national idea” according to which his sovereign people serve as “guardians of peace in the western part of the Eurasian continent.” [37] If true independence is out of the question, however, and Ukrainians must choose between the two great geopolitical poles, Bazaluk favors the US-dominated West. “An objective analysis of the two major loci of civilisation […] leads to the conclusion that at present for Ukraine and the Ukrainians, European culture (Western civilisation) is promising and profitable with the democratic model of governance,” he writes, adding ridiculously that the “best side of the model is: a) high social standards; b) multiculturalism; c) guaranteed personal rights and freedoms.” [38]

A curious feature of Bazaluk’s book is that he sometimes seems to be arguing with himself. Ironically, in view of his tangible Russophobia and strong preference for Ukrainian independence, he also acknowledges that the standards of living and morality in his country plummeted following the collapse of the Soviet Union. People did less reading after 1990, he complains, and social capital deteriorated, with “evil dogs” appearing in people’s yards for security as the general level of trust in society diminished [39]. As he relates, “every year divided the Ukrainians into rich and poor more and more, those who could give and take bribes […] ‘Honest’ Ukrainians were getting fewer and fewer.” [40]. “During Kuchma’s presidency, Ukraine destroyed the Soviet model of education, and even then, it did not find time to build its own more efficient and self-sufficient form,” he writes, elaborating: “Under Yushchenko, the attempt to impose on the Ukrainian mentality, European standards of training ended ingloriously. […] It often grates on my ear,” he gripes, “when I hear such wild, simplified arguments of thinking, which correspond to the primary school level, but not to graduate students.” [41]

Bazaluk would prefer to see “Russian aggression […] squeezed out of the territory of Europe to deep into the Byzantine-Asian culture, creating tensions away from European borders” [42], the “Russian World” carrying associations with “the culture of violence” and “little green men” [43]. From his own account, however, the benign despotism of the mature Soviet Union seems to have coincided with one of Ukraine’s most prosperous periods, with workers enjoying social capital and a comparatively high standard of living, and Ukrainization of schools and state institutions being permitted during the seventies and eighties [44]. “Perhaps just out of despair I have written this book,” the academic confesses near the end of his study [45]. If he really desires to see his nation prosper, perhaps Bazaluk would be more justified in longing for the “opportunities for rest and recovery of its potential” that might accompany a neo-Brezhnevian stagnation of the political waters rather than romantic Cossacks surfing waves of imagined disobedience.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.

Endnotes

[1] Bazaluk, Oleg. Corruption in Ukraine: Rulers’ Mentality and the Destiny of the Nation, Geophilosophy of Ukraine. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, pp. 17-18.

[2] Ibid., p. 14.

[3] Ibid., p. 19.

[4] Ibid., p. 17.

[5] Ibid., p. 46.

[6] Ibid., pp. 31-32.

[7] Ibid., p. 27.

[8] Ibid., pp. 29-30.

[9] Ibid., p. 34.

[10] Ibid., p. 25.

[11] Ibid., pp. 25-26.

[12] Ibid., p. 3.

[13] Ibid., p. 45.

[14] Ibid., p. 35.

[15] Ibid., p. 3.

[16] “Making History with ‘Meat Ramparts’ – C’est Bakhmut”. South Front (February 27, 2023): https://southfront.org/making-history-with-meat-ramparts-cest-bakhmut/

[17] “Inside the ‘Bakhmut Meat Grinder’: How Russia Forced Ukrainians to Retreat from Artyamovsk, Their Supposed ‘Fortress’ in Donbass”. Russia Today (May 21, 2023): https://www.rt.com/russia/576632-artemovsk-bakhmut-battle/

[18] Bazaluk, Oleg. Corruption in Ukraine: Rulers’ Mentality and the Destiny of the Nation, Geophilosophy of Ukraine. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, p. 99.

[19] Ibid., p. 82.

[20] Ibid., p. 46.

[21] Ibid., pp. 81-82.

[22] Ibid., p. 108.

[23] Ibid., p. 110.

[24] Ibid., p. 128.

[25] Ibid., p. 151.

[26] Ibid., p. 226.

[27] Ibid., p. 224.

[28] Ibid., p. 202.

[29] Ibid., p. 203.

[30] Ibid., p. 208.

[31] Ibid., p. 20.

[32] Ibid., p. 49.

[33] Ibid., p. 134.

[34] Ibid., p. 154.

[35] Ibid., p. 214.

[36] Ibid., p. 186.

[37] Ibid., pp. 218-219.

[38] Ibid., p. 183.

[39] Ibid., p. 12.

[40] Ibid., p. 48.

[41] Ibid., p. 213.

[42] Ibid., p. 196.

[43] Ibid., p. 197.

[44] Ibid., p. 24.

[45] Ibid., p. 200.