In Vladimir Putin’s skewed view of the past, Ukraine was able to seek independence in 1991 only because of a mistake made by another Vladimir nearly 70 years before. In his zeal to obscure Ukrainian national identity, Mr. Putin has blamed the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin for “creating” an independent Ukraine in 1922 “by separating, severing what is historically Russian land.”
The socialist republic of Ukraine never achieved real independence during the Soviet era. But Mr. Putin claims Lenin nonetheless made a fatal error by taking a more accommodative stance toward the nationalities that soon would fall under Moscow’s control.
These two events – the Bolshevik revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – are not connected only in Mr. Putin’s imagination. They are linked through a history of appalling violence and destruction. The place names of battles of the Russian civil war (1918-21), a conflagration that devoured 12 million lives, are familiar to anyone following today’s news of Russia’s military fiasco in Ukraine.
Far from an obscure bit of history, this story is critical to understanding the present, according to military historian Antony Beevor. In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Beevor discusses the parallels between the civil war that birthed the Soviet Union and Mr. Putin’s drive to turn Ukraine into a client state – a plan that has, thus far, epically failed.
Moreover, the Bolshevik coup d’etat of October 1917 – made possible by the chaos that consumed Russia after the February revolution toppling the Romanov dynasty – shaped the course of the 20th century as few other events did. It created the ideological dividing line between fascism and communism, communism and capitalism, East and West, the U.S. and the Soviet Union – a dividing line that vanished in 1991, giving way to Ukrainian independence that Mr. Putin refuses to recognize.
“The First World War has been rightly described by British and German historians as the original catastrophe. But the Russian civil war was the most influential of all because it created this split between Red and White, left and right, which led to the Spanish civil war – and all because of this cycle of violence,” said Mr. Beevor, the author of “Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921.”
“The Bolsheviks had promised to annihilate the middle class. So in Spain not surprisingly this created the rise of a fascist right. And the rise of the fascist right terrified the left who expected the destruction of socialism and even liberalism. This is the sort of polemicization that led to the Second World War,” said Mr. Beevor.
Listen to the full interview with Mr. Beevor by listening to this episode of History As It Happens.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.