Han Yuncai
03
Historical feud between Ukraine and Russia
3-1
The dispute over the ownership of Kremil
Crimea's geographical location determines its historical destiny: the Crimean Peninsula is located in the northeast of the Black Sea, adjacent to the throat of the two continents of the Near East, the geographical location is of great strategic significance, has always been in the key field of convergence and conflict of various civilizations, religions and the interests of major powers, has an extremely complex historical context and cultural composition, and witnessed the rise and fall of many major ethnic and political affiliations.
The Crimean Peninsula is like a giant octopus with all its tentacles extended, suspended on the surface of the northern Black Sea for many years, and it is an important sea route connecting Europe with the Middle East. Crimea was both a strategic location for the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, as well as the most vulnerable "soft belly" of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
Historically, "Crimea" was actually a variant of the Term "Crimean" for the Greeks and later the Eastern Roman Empire, and latin and Greek were used to add Nia, Leah or Nicea to the subject, and the root of the word was ia, and its function was to form a negative abstract noun, "Crimea" means "land of the Crimeans" or "country of the Crimeans".
From the mid-4th century BC to the present day, the history of Crimea has flowed quietly between Europe and Asia and the vast Black Sea for nearly 2,500 years. However, its true cultural origins, national identity, national identity, social structure and international image remain unsolved mysteries.
To a considerable extent, Crimea's geographical location determines its historical destiny. As Gwendolyn Sasse, a prominent scholar of Crimea, has pointed out, this actually constitutes the most critical factor in Crimea's autonomy or independence. It can be said that its development history is a complex process in which different civilizations, religions, and governance models have successively dominated and shaped this geographical hub.
The ancient Greek poet Homer, in his long epic poem Odyssey, mentioned that the northern Black Sea was inhabited by the Simili people, which is considered to be the earliest documentary record of human activity in the Crimea region, although contemporary scholars still dispute whether the Simili people are immigrants or native residents.
In the seventh century BC, the Scythians drove the Simili people out of the peninsula and began to operate there for a long time. About 200 years later, Herodotus, the Greek "father of history," described these people as Indo-European-speaking nomads.
The Mongol armies established the Kashmir Khanate: over the course of nearly two millennia, the Crimean Peninsula was conquered and occupied by the Greeks, Goths, Huns, Khazars, and by the Byzantine Empire, and in 1237, by the Golden Horde, which was largely of Mixed Mongol and Turkic origins, it truly set the cultural tone for Crimea today. It was also during this period that Crimea acquired its present-day place name. Until its incorporation into Tsarist Russia in 1783, Crimea was largely under the rule of the Tatars, who claimed to be the Golden Horde, descendants of Genghis Khan.
The first to administer Crimea was the Mongolian bald Timur. In 1430, The eleventh grandson of Genghis Khan, Haji Glai, formally established the Crimean Khanate, with the capital at Bakhshisaray. During the reign of Haji Gelai, he devoted himself to promoting friendly relations with the then expanding Polish-Lithuanian Principality.
In 1475, the Great Khan of the Crimean Khanate, The Sixth Son of Haji Gelai, Mingli Gelai, was captured by the Ottoman Turkish Empire and released two years later. In 1478, the Ottoman authorities signed an important treaty with the Crimean Khanate. Under the treaty, the rulers of Crimea became vassals of the Ottoman Sultan, who was in charge of the foreign affairs of the khanate, who took part in the military campaigns of the former.
Crimea was even one of the nightmares of the Muscovite Principality, a powerful Muslim Tatar state that captured Moscow and slaughtered 150,000 inhabitants of Moscow, so much so that the Muscovite Principality had to garrison tens of thousands of troops in its south for decades in preparation for a life-and-death battle with the Crimean Khanate.
The Crimean Khanate sought a balance between the Polish-Lithuanian Principality and the Muscovite Principality: The Crimean Khanate always sought a balance between the Polish-Lithuanian Principality and the Muscovite Principality in order to maximize its own interests. On the one hand, Crimea and the Polish-Lithuanian Principality worked together against the Muscovite Principality, and on the other hand, it allied itself with the Muscovite Principality against the Kazan Tatars. In its relations with Ottoman Turkey, the Crimean Khanate did not go beyond the framework of the 1478 treaty and always participated in the foreign military operations of the Turkish Empire.
An important source of income for the Crimean Khanate at that time was the capture of Slavs and Romanians as slaves and sold to the Turks in the south, a trade that the Tatars referred to as the "steppe peoples' harvest". This went on for a long time.
Russia annexed Crimea: After the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia's influence rose sharply in Crimea and took advantage of instability within the khanate to intervene. In 1774, Russia forced the Ottoman Empire to recognize crimea as independent, and from 1777 the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of Russia. In 1783, Catherine the Great simply annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Reflecting on her achievements, she said: "I came to Russia empty-handed, and now I have finally brought to Russia my 'dowry' – Crimea and Poland. After the Annexation of Crimea by Tsarist Russia, it began to migrate Russians to the Crimean Peninsula, and the proportion of Crimean Tatars gradually declined.
Over the next half century or so, the Tsar launched several Russo-Turkish wars, seizing large areas of territory from the Balkans in the west to the Caucasus in the east, including the mouth of the Danube. Russia frequently went to war with the Ottoman Turkish Empire, the main purpose of which was to use the Black Sea to open up access to the Mediterranean Sea.
The outbreak of the Krimir War changed Russia's national fortunes: the czarist whales in the Near East encroached upon, causing strong resentment among the Western powers, especially Britain and France. They feared that Tsarist Russia would gain complete control of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, thereby pushing its forces deep into the Mediterranean and threatening British shipping routes to India and French colonies in North Africa. As a result, Britain and France secretly supported Turkey against Tsarist Russia, and the Crimean War broke out in 1853.
On November 27, 1853, a naval battle broke out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea region. Soon, Britain, France and other countries formed an alliance with the Ottomans and declared war on Russia, which evolved into a major war that changed the world pattern, known in history as the "Crimean War". The war ended in the defeat of Russia, which lost its status as a European power. As the path of western expansion was blocked, Russia turned to the East and began to encroach on Chinese territory and seaports; England and Law further increased their dominance in Europe, turning the Ottomans into their vassals.
The Crimean War was the "first modernization war" in world history, which greatly affected and changed the history of Russia: on the one hand, it changed the status and relations between the European powers militarily and politically, limited the expansion of Tsarist power to the south in the following decades, and forced Russia to implement strategic retreat; on the other hand, the serfdom reforms and military and educational reforms provoked by the defeat in Tsarist Russia largely determined the future direction of Russia.
The situation in Crimea changed after World War II – from being given away as a gift to seeking its own independence:
The "Yalta System" influenced the world: the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917 also had a huge impact on the Crimean Peninsula, and the local Tatars openly raised the slogan "Crimean Crimean of crimeans". The Bolsheviks initially had little influence here, but during the civil war of 1918-1921, Crimea was once again a focal point for the Red and White armies. In October 1920, the Bolsheviks finally gained control of the Crimean Peninsula until it was occupied by German fascists in 1941.
During the Soviet period, Crimea gained the status of an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under the sovereign jurisdiction of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Crimea has de facto autonomy in the fields of education, health, etc., and military fortresses such as Sevastopol are under the direct jurisdiction of Moscow because of their extremely important strategic position.
During World War II, the crimean peninsula was occupied by Germany, Romania and Italy from 1941 to 1944, except for Sevastopol, which remained until July 1942, when it fell. During this period, some Tatars either actively or passively cooperated with the fascist occupation authorities. In 1944, after the Soviets re-liberated Sevastopol, Stalin used this as an excuse to forcibly exile all Tatars to Central Asia, and about 46% of the exiles died of starvation or disease. In 1945, Crimea was transformed into an autonomous republic and administratively remained under the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The most important event in the history of contemporary international history that has written about Crimea is the Yalta Conference held here at the end of World War II. In February 1945, the heads of state of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom met here and reached the famous Yalta Agreement. This international document played an important role in easing the contradictions between the anti-fascist allies, strengthening the united front, coordinating the combat operations against the German-Japanese fascists, and accelerating the victory process of the world anti-fascist war. The policy of distribution of the interests of the great powers formulated at this meeting had a profound impact on the formation of the post-war world pattern and constituted the "Yalta system".
In 1954, in order to "celebrate" the 300th anniversary of the "alliance" between the Cossacks of Ukraine and Russia, the then Leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, led the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to pass a resolution stating that Crimea was classified as a "symbol of enduring friendship" to Ukraine "in view of the economic commonality, geographical proximity, economic and cultural relations between Crimea and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic".
At the time, this move may have been a game of "fertile water does not flow into the fields of outsiders" or "left pocket into right pocket out", after all, Russia and Ukraine belong to the Soviet Union. But Khrushchev could never have imagined that more than 30 years later, the impregnable alliance of the Soviet Union would split into 15 countries, and his whim would in fact lay the historical roots of Crimea's current political conflict in Ukraine.
In 1976, the Tatars were rehabilitated, but not allowed to return to their homeland. While expelling the Tatars, the Soviet authorities mobilized and organized a large number of Russians to emigrate here, and the Russians began to surpass the Ukrainians and became the main inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula. From this time on, the proportion of Tatars in the total population of Crimea was about 1/4.
The rise and fall of the Kremil Separatist Movement: The writing of history, memory writing and symbolic works guided by the ethnic and religious policies of the Soviet authorities not only did not dissolve the contradictions and differences among the peoples, but on the contrary gave rise to three different Crimean identities: for the Crimean Tatars, who were able to return to their "historical homeland" until the period of Gorbachev's Reforms, the historical facts of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries were enough to prove that Crimea was their only homeland; for the Russians, Crimea was born part of the Russian world; for Ukrainians, Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine, dating back to the Kievan Rus' period in the Middle Ages.
Gorbachev's reforms eventually intensified the hidden contradictions within the Soviet Union, which eventually led to the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Crimea, on the other hand, held a referendum on January 20, 1991, and 93.3 percent of the 81.4 percent of the eligible votes supported the restoration of the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic. In this way, Crimea became the last autonomous republic established in the Soviet Union and the only local subject to decide by referendum to adopt such a form of government.
Many Russians still see the Crimean Peninsula as "their own turf" and are bitter about Khrushchev's former decisions. Some Russian politicians have also from time to time raised initiatives to reintegrate Crimea into Russia's territory, which has further stimulated the separation movement within Crimea.
In July 1993, the Russian parliament voted on a proposal on whether to grant the federal status of Sevastopol, a military fortress in Crimea, with 166 votes in favour and only 1 against. Since then, due to the needs of domestic politics, Russian politicians have said on many occasions that the Crimean Peninsula should not become Ukrainian territory under any circumstances.
Crimea's secession movement gradually fell into a low ebb in 1994-1995. The main reasons are within the separatist movement – the power struggle between the Crimean Supreme Soviet and the President , and Russia's multiple dilemmas of domestic transition – unable to give substantial support to Crimean separatists. The consistently strong pressure of the Ukrainian authorities is also an important exogenous variable.
After World War I, in 1918, Crimea came under the jurisdiction of the newly established Soviet Russia, and in 1922 the Soviet Union was established, and the previously established Crimean Tatar Socialist Autonomous Republic remained under the jurisdiction of Soviet Russia. During this period, the newborn Poland fought a lose-lose War with the equally nascent Soviet Russia, and the treaty of Riga signed after the war stipulated that western Ukraine would become Polish territory.
Why did the Soviet Union still act justify the partition of Poland with Germany in 1939? For in Stalin's view, the Soviet Union had only recovered the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus that had been occupied by Poland. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Ukraine and the Black Sea coast became the hardest hit areas, and famous battles broke out on the Crimean Peninsula. From 1941 to 1944, Crimea was occupied by the Germans for three years, and Sevastopol, a military fortress, was devastated beyond recognition.
It has to be said that "changing the demographic structure" is Russia's usual trick, whether in Vladivostok in the Far East or In Kaliningrad in Europe, this trick has been tried and tested, and Crimea has been constantly turned into a future parting ways with Ukraine.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ownership of the Crimean Peninsula immediately became a point of disagreement between Russia, Ukraine and Crimea, and Russian-Ukrainian relations were troubled. Although it refuses to recognize the 1954 zoning adjustment, Russia also knows that it has inherited only the status and rights and interests of the former Soviet Union in the world, and Crimea is subordinate to Ukraine, which is also a union republic, and Russia's territorial claims to Crimea are obviously unreasonable and do not have the support of the international community.
Although Russia finally achieved the "return" of Crimea through a series of subsequent operations, the negative impact is likely to continue. After all, the reason that Crimea belongs to Russia is too far-fetched. From the above history, it is not difficult to see that from the merger of Russia and Ukraine in 1654 to the incorporation of Crimea into the territory of Tsarist Russia in 1783, there was a full one hundred and thirty years in between.
Crimea Incident: On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement with the Chairman of the Crimean Parliament, the Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Mayor of Sevastopol in Sevastopol on the accession of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia in the Kremlin. The signing ceremony was followed by the sound of the Russian national anthem. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea of Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian Federation. Since then, Russia has de facto taken over the territory and established the Crimean Federal District, with two federal subjects, namely the Crimean Republic and Sevastopol.
3-2
The dispute over Orthodox canonical jurisdiction between Russia and Ukraine
Both Russia and Eastern Ukraine are Orthodox Christians. The orthodox church's governing mechanisms originated in the early days of Christianity. In the 3rd century AD, the Christian Church was already an international religious organization based on the episcopal system and based on the supremacy of episcopal autonomy and the supremacy of the Ecumenical Council (Вселенский соо). It recognizes the authority of each bishop in the bishops' conference, while at the same time considering Rome to be "the head of the Church, the source of the unity of all the priesthoods." After the edict of Milan by Constantine the Great (313), Christianity became the legal religion of the Roman Empire, and the system of bishopric administration was inherited. In 395, with the division of the Roman Empire, Christianity split into the Eastern school centered on the Greek-speaking region and the Western school centered on the Latin-speaking region, and the capitals of the two factions, Constantinople and Rome, became the centers of the Eastern church and the Western church accordingly. The two sides fought fiercely for the leadership of the universal Christian church. In 476, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. At that time, Eastern Roman Christianity consisted of four major parishes: the Diocese of Constantinople, the Diocese of Alexandria, the Diocese of Antioch, and the Diocese of Jerusalem. Among them, the Diocese of Constantinople occupies a predominant position, enjoying the titles of "universal" and "most holy" parish of the Eastern Church. The Council of Carlsetton (451) proposed that "the bishops of the Diocese of Constantinople have the same powers as the bishops of Rome in ecclesiastical affairs", but the bishops of Rome opposed them. The Second Council of The Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553) "elevated the status of the Church of Constantinople above that of the Church of Rome, and made it the honour of chief representative of the universal Church of Christ". This decision was generally recognized among the local autonomous churches of the Eastern Church. Thereafter, the establishment of local autonomous churches in the Orthodox world had to be approved by the Patriarch of Constantinople before it could take effect. At present, the global Orthodox Church includes 15 local autonomous churches, of which the first is still the Constantinople Orthodox Church. The decision made by the Patriarch of Constantinople in October 2018 was in fact to use his special historical position to issue a pass for the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Russia and Ukraine are of the same origin. Recently, however, there has been a fierce dispute between Russia and Ukraine over the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The full support of the Ukrainian decision-making level and the active promotion of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople prompted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to break away from the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church and enter the arms of the Church of Constantinople.
The change of jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has had a serious impact on the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, and maintaining the sphere of influence of the Russian Orthodox Church has become a diplomatic task facing both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state power. The Russian Orthodox Church, for its part, views the Patriarchate's support for the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a provocative act of "usurping the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church", because ukraine's most influential Orthodox organization, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), is a canonical territory under the direct jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. This situation has also historically occurred. The Russian nation and the Ukrainian nation can be said to be of the same origin, and their ancestors are all East Slavs. After the establishment of the ancient Rus' state of Kievan Rus, the East Slavs were called Rus' people. In 988, Vladimir I, Grand Duke of Kievan Rus' proclaimed Christianity the state religion. Since then, Ross has been a member of the Christian family. In 1054, Christianity split into Roman Catholicism and Byzantine Orthodoxy, from which Ross became a member of the Orthodox world. In terms of organizational form, the Rus' Church belongs to a metropolitan district under the direct jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (Митроолия), the governing body is located in Kiev, the capital of Ancient Rus', and the Metropolitan is designated by the Patriarch of Constantinople after consultation with the Byzantine Emperor. In the 12th century, the term "Great Rus" first appeared, and it referred to the entire Rus' state in general. In the 14th century, as the Orthodox Metropolitan of Rus was divided into two parts, Southwest Rus and Northeast Rus, led by Garic, became known as "Little Rus". In 1654, eastern Ukraine was incorporated into Russia, and the southwestern Rus' region, where the Duchy of Garic and Warren was located, was called "Little Rus'"; the term "Belarus" also appeared in the 14th century. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it referred specifically to the Rus' region, which was located between the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. In the second half of the 16th century, the extension of "Belarus" expanded to the whole of Belarus. Thus, "Great Rus'" refers specifically to Russia, "Little Rus'" refers to Ukraine, and "Belarus" refers to Belarus. The concept of three nation-states, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, arose.
In 1439, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church jointly convened the Ecumenical Council of Christianity in Florence, Italy. The Council adopted an agreement to merge the Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church. Representatives of the declining Byzantine Empire agreed to sign the agreement, as did the Rus' Orthodox Church, represented by The Metropolitan of Kiev, Isidore (Greek). However, the rising Northeastern Rus 's (Principality of Moscow) was adamantly opposed to the merger of Eastern and Western Christian denominations. In protest against the signing of the Metropolitan of Kiev, in 1448 the Metropolitan District of Moscow was declared an autonomous metropolitan. Subsequently, the Metropolitan Of the Ross Orthodox Church was moved from Kiev to Moscow. From then on, Northeast Rus no longer accepted metropolitan bishops sent by the Byzantine patriarchate, but appointed all Rus' metropolitans from among the clergy of the country. In 1453, the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by Turkey, and the influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was greatly reduced. In 1458, the Metropolitan Of Southwest rus, centered on Kiev, agreed to submit to the byzantine metropolitans. Since then, the Rus' Church has been divided into two in terms of organizational management: the southwest Rus' is subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the northeast Rus' is internally autonomous. At the end of the 15th century, Northeast Rus' finally broke away from Mongol rule and regained its unity. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, this unified centralized state based on the Muscovite Principality was called "Russia". In 1589, the Moscow Orthodox Metropolitan Was promoted to the Position of Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' and elected the first Patriarch of Russia. In 1593, the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Churches around the world signed a legal proclamation "recognizing and approving the status of Patriarch Yolf of Moscow" and calling him "the fifth Patriarch of the Orthodox world, after the Patriarch of Jerusalem". In this way, the Russian Orthodox Church became the fifth patriarchal region of the Orthodox world.
In 1596, the Ukrainian and Belarusian Orthodox Churches were again attacked by the Catholic Church. Some Ukrainian and Belarusian Orthodox clergy met in Brest and decided to merge the Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church, i.e., the Orthodox Church was organizationally subordinate to the papacy and accepted Catholic doctrine, but retained the original Orthodox liturgy. The consequence of the merger of the Brest Churches was the formation of the Merged Church, and some Ukrainians and Belarusians became members of the Agglomerate (also known as the Eastern Catholic Church). In addition, some people have converted to Catholicism. However, the vast majority of Ukrainians still maintain the traditional Orthodox faith. In 1648, the Ukrainian national leader Bogdan Khmelnytsky led a popular uprising against Polish national and religious oppression. In 1654, the Russian Tsar reached an agreement with Khmelnytsky agreeing to accept the eastern Ukrainian region into Russia. Subsequently, Russia launched a war against Poland on the grounds of "liberating national brothers". In 1667, the Russo-Polish War ended in Russian victory. According to the Andrewsovo Armistice Agreement signed between the two sides, Ukraine was divided into two parts: the left bank of the Dnieper (i.e., eastern Ukraine) belonged to Russia, and the right bank of the Dnieper (i.e., western Ukraine) belonged to Poland. In 1686, Russia and Poland signed the Permanent Peace Treaty. Accordingly, not only eastern Ukraine, but also "Kiev and its adjacent areas, which were originally scheduled to be returned to Poland, are permanently vested in Russia." In the same year, the Episcopal Church of Constantinople issued a proclamation "agreeing to transfer the Metropolitan District of Kiev to the canonical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate". In this way, the Metropolitan Diocese of Kiev became the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church.
When Patriarch Badoromay I of Constantinople announced on October 11, 2018, that he would cancel his decision to transfer the Metropolitan Metropolitan of Kiev to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686, he was in effect denying the canonical jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church over the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which inevitably led to a statement of severance of diplomatic relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. Moreover, the decision of the Patriarch of Constantinople was made at the request of the President of Ukraine, Peter Poroshenko. In 2016 and 2018, P. Poroshenko repeatedly expressed to the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople his desire to transfer the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to the canonical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It can be seen that the focus of the conflict between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian Orthodox Church is also the crux of the religious dispute between Russia and Ukraine - the "defection" of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Russian-Ukrainian religious strife has shaken the religious dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church has taken a tough stance toward the newly formed Ukrainian Orthodox Church and has resolutely refused to recognize its legitimacy. Not only that, but the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in the Moscow Patriarchate) also dismissed two bishops of the Church who attended the Ukrainian Orthodox Unification Conference, and "called on the Patriarch of Constantinople to recall the Patriarchal Decrees that gave the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autonomy" and "corrected mistakes", demanding that "separatists" repent, etc. It can be seen that the Russian Orthodox Church insists on unchanging the canonical jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
However, Ukrainian officials are using administrative means to bring the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in the Moscow Patriarchate) and the churches it uses into the orbit of state administration. On December 20, 2018, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a bill requiring the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in the Moscow Patriarchate) to re-register and change its name to the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church" within three months. The organization will exist as a direct body of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. As of the end of March 2019, more than 500 Ukrainian Orthodox parishes (In the Moscow Patriarchate) were transferred to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, mainly in the central and western regions of Ukraine. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, in September 2018, there were 11,392 religious buildings and 12,328 parishes in Ukraine (Moscow Patriarchate); 3,784 religious buildings and 5,114 parishes in Ukraine;1,195 religious buildings and 868 parishes in Ukraine's autonomous Orthodox Church. As things stand, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in the Moscow Patriarchate) will soon lose its traditional position as the largest Orthodox organization in Ukraine.
3-3
Russia's ambiguous attitude towards the independence of the Donbass region of Ukraine
Since independence in 1991, Ukraine has oscillated between pro-Russian and pro-Western regimes, first with the country being dominated by pro-Russian forces for a long time, followed by the "Color Revolution" in 2013 (the "Orange Revolution" also occurred in 2004), when pro-Western factions seized power.
Ukraine's all-out inversion to the West has caused uneasiness in Russia. Ethnic Russians in Ukraine are dissatisfied with Ukraine's "departure from Russia and entry into Europe", the Crimean Peninsula held a referendum to merge with Russia, and the two eastern Ukrainian states (Donbass region) declared independence from Ukraine and established two republics, Donetsk and Luhansk.
Although the two republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are not recognized by the international community, including Russia, it is believed that the supporters behind them are Russia. The Donbass conflict, therefore, is essentially a contest between Ukraine and Russia. There are historical reasons why the two donbas states want to become independent from Ukraine.
Originally a wasteland, the Donbass region of Ukraine was found in the early 19th century when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and coal mines were the blood of industry.
Russia not only encouraged Russians to emigrate to the Donbass region, but also established a governor there to control the economy and culture. Although the proportion of local residents (Ukrainians) in the Donbass region accounts for 3/4, the proportion of Russian languages has exceeded the proportion of local languages due to the long-term influence of Russia.
At that time, Russia's territory was large enough, not only covering most of the Land of the East Slavs, but also including a variety of ethnic minorities in the empire, and Russia's policy of "Russification" in minority areas led to increasingly acute ethnic contradictions in the country and gave an excuse for external interference.
Before World War I, Russia and Austria were fighting for the Balkans, and in order to counter Tsarist Russia, Austria concocted the national concept of "Ukraine" in the Transpathian region under its rule. The austrian concocted concept of "Ukraine" was also echoed by some Ukrainians. In particular, the Western Ukrainians, who had been under Polish Lithuanian rule, had hoped that their russian compatriots would be able to save themselves during the period of Polish rule and persecution. However, the forced "Russification" seriously damaged their interests, so the Western Ukrainians responded to the national name "Ukraine" and even demanded the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state.
In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Russia, which completely ended the rule of the Tsarist feudal dynasty. In 1917, Ukraine established the People's Republic of Ukraine, the first nation-state established in the history of Ukraine. After World War I, Ukraine established Soviet power and became a republic of the Soviet Union.
After the end of World War II, with the recovery of the Soviet economy, the contradictions between Ukraine and the Soviet central government were temporarily alleviated. Ukraine, with its industrialization, became the second largest economic entity in the Soviet Union after Russia. In particular, the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine was an important center of heavy industry in Ukraine and the entire Soviet Union. At this time, because of the economic prosperity of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia seem to have returned to the close relationship between brothers
After Ukraine's independence in 1991, how to deal with the relationship between the Ukrainian language and the Russian language became an important issue before Ukraine. The Donbass region in eastern Ukraine is deeply influenced by Russia, with 70% of russian-speaking in the region, while the central and western parts of Ukraine have developed an independent Ukrainian language during the period of resistance to Polish rule.
In order to develop the economy and highlight national independence, post-independence Ukraine once looked to the West. Ukrainian politics became an arena for the struggle between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions. Ukraine's pro-Western policies caused resentment among the people of Crimea, where the Russian-speaking population is predominantly Russian, and the misuse of Ukraine's policies after independence led to an economic downturn that exacerbated their desire to secede from Ukraine. If donbass, an important industrial base, becomes independent, it will be a devastating blow to Ukraine, which first made huge concessions and gave donbass huge subsidies to temporarily curb the independence tendency.
The pro-Western faction in Ukraine gradually gained the upper hand in the struggle against the pro-Russian faction and gained power in Ukraine. In 2014, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was impeached by the Ukrainian parliament for terminating a free trade agreement between Ukraine and the European Union to the detriment of pro-European interests. Under pressure from parliament, Yanukovych had to resign as president and pro-European forces came to power.
After the pro-European faction came to power, it began to implement a comprehensive policy of "de-Russification", with Ukrainian being made the only official language in the country and Russian schools being converted to Ukrainian teaching. Politically, Ukraine could even join NATO, which would be tantamount to exposing Russia to NATO's strike. These are unacceptable to Russia in any way, and have caused resentment among the people of the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbass region.
In August 2014, the Donbass region established two independent republics, Donetsk and Luhansk. But it did not follow the Crimean model and join Russia directly. Because this de facto independent place can become a buffer zone between the West and Russia, once Ukraine joins NATO, the existence of this place will alleviate the damage of NATO's eastward expansion to Russia to some extent, and Russia can also use the resources here to develop military industry to counter the West.
In September 2014 and July 2017, Ukraine, Russia and the European Union reached a temporary ceasefire, but this did not resolve the conflict in the Donbass region, and small-scale conflicts continue. Controlling the Donbass region is in Russia's security interests more than sovereignty over the Donbass region. For Ukraine, the loss of the Donbass region is equivalent to the loss of three-quarters of the industrial area, and it is even worse for the already poor Ukraine.
After the independence referendum on the Crimean Peninsula was held and incorporated into Russian territory, the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine (including donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) declared independence and armed clashes broke out with government forces, the Ukrainian government became tougher on Russia, demanding that Russia "return" Crimea and "stop supporting" the civilian armed forces in the Donbass region. The Russian side stressed that Crimea's entry into Russia is the legitimate choice of the Crimean people, Russia is not a participant in the conflict on the Donbass issue, and the Ukrainian government should settle the problem through negotiations with the civilian armed forces in the east. Russia's attitude on the Donbass issue is rather ambiguous.
3-4
The Great Famine in Ukraine during the Soviet Period
In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union began to industrialize. In order to solve the problem of insufficient grain and raw materials in the process of large-scale industrialization and to change the backward mode of production in the countryside, the Soviet Union launched a campaign of agricultural collectivization. In 1931, grain production in Soviet agriculture declined, and rural labor productivity also fell sharply. At the beginning of 1932, famine of a certain scale began in the Ural region and the Western Siberian region. Soon, famine also occurred in 44 districts of Ukraine. That summer, famine stopped for a time, and autumn recurred, until the end of 1933. As the most important grain-producing region in the Soviet Union, Ukraine suffered the most from this famine, and the death toll is particularly interesting. In his book, Western researcher Robert Conquist argues that the death toll in Ukraine during the famine is "conservatively estimated" to be about 5 million.
"I saw a terrible sight. The woman was slaughtering the body of a biological child on a table. "This is a terrifying scene that a person watched in the Ukrainian countryside when the Great Famine of the Soviet Period occurred." She nagged as she dried it, saying that I had already eaten Manetchka, and now I was going to marinate Vanechka. It will be enough for us to eat for some time..."
Mekoranko, Ukrainian poet and playwright, was 13 years old when he was 1933. He recalls feelings of hunger, devouring his heart like a poisonous snake, prompting him to do things that others would not dare to do—go to the cadre restaurant of a nearby factory, steal abandoned fish heads, and take them home for his mother to cook soup. Before starving to death, people do whatever it takes to fill their hunger. They crushed the dry grass and the crushed straw, cooked it, and then made it into a pie. Hay, and other edible plants, can be mashed, crushed, and made into pies in the same way—though there's not a bit of flour in it. In addition, they go to the riverbed to collect shellfish, catch snakes and rats in the fields to eat. Bark is also edible – they are ripped off, boiled in water, and then powdered so they can be swallowed.
As there was less and less to eat, rumors of eating human flesh spread throughout the village. The village said that a family had killed the oldest children in the family and starved the older children. MecoLaenko's mother told him to be careful when he came out to steal the fish's head, and not to let those who were so hungry that they could do everything be targeted. In order to survive, Mecora enko ventured into the cadre restaurant and escaped the most difficult and terrifying moment of his life.
So why do people who grow food starve to death? It turned out that this was because the Soviet Union was radically collectivizing agriculture.
Collectivization of agriculture means dividing the private economy of individual small peasants into a collective economy through rural collective cooperatives. It is to pull out the rich peasants' family property and confiscate it, and turn it into a collective in the village. In this process, the kulaks, as a class to be criticized, must be eliminated from history through collectivization. Of course, the kulaks were unwilling, and in passive resistance, the grain production of the whole village was reduced.
In order for collectivization to advance rapidly, the Soviet administrators, in their suppression and expropriation of the kulaks, had to harden their grip even harder. Worse still, from the autumn of 1932 onwards, many peasants in the Ukrainian region were classified as "kulaks" and became enemies of the state. In this way, large-scale disasters are difficult to avoid.
Every soviet knew that Ukraine was the granary and grain-producing powerhouse of Eastern Europe. The country is in the process of industrialization and collectivization, and it needs a large amount of grain procurement, and with the advancement of industrialization indicators, the proportion of grain requisition must also keep up with the times, and it is necessary to increase. If the local grain collection in Ukraine is not effective, either the local officials are ineffective in implementation, or the kulaks are doing the trick from it, in short, it should be done forcefully. According to the survivors at the time, the grain collection team came, they took all the wheat, and almost all the food that could be eaten in the house was taken out. Including beans that are not usually eaten much, but are just in case. "Many people have no food at home and can only sit still." Heavily armed grain collection teams broke into the homes of the rich peasants and searched the corners, under the beds, the roofs, and other places where grain might be hidden. Even if you dig three feet into the ground, you must find the grain that the rich peasants have buried in advance. In this way, in addition to grain, potatoes, beets, cabbage, etc., almost everything that can be eaten, has been transported away.
All that remains is famine and the plague that is bound to come as scheduled when people's physical resistance declines. Disasters happened on a massive scale. In the various propaganda media of contemporary Ukraine, the death toll in Ukraine during famine sometimes reaches 7 million.
In early 2002, the Ukrainian government declassified more than 1,000 secret documents about the famine. Ukrainian President Kuchma also signed a decree designating November 22 as a "famine remembrance day." On November 25, 2006, Ukrainian cities flags were flown at half-mast and black ribbons were wrapped around the flags to mourn the victims of the Holodomor. Ukrainian President Yushchenko and Speaker of parliament Moroz presided over the groundbreaking ceremony of the Holodomor Memorial and held candlelight mourning in the downtown square. Television and radio stations throughout Ukraine stopped broadcasting entertainment programs. On November 22, 2014, Ukrainians held a ceremony in Kiev to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine and mourn the victims. Ukrainian President Peter Poroshenko and his wife attended the commemoration ceremony.
3-5
Chernobyl nuclear accident
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident (Ukrainian Чорнобильськая катастрофа) or simply "Chernobyl incident" was a nuclear reactor accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine under Soviet rule. The accident is considered to be the worst nuclear power accident in history and the first major accident to be rated as a seventh-level event by the International Nuclear Incident Classification Scale (the second was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, on March 11, 2011). The city of Pripyat was thus abandoned.
On April 25, 1986, Reactor No. 4 was scheduled to shut down for regular maintenance and testing, and took the opportunity to test the reactor's turbogenerator capacity – to check whether there was still sufficient power supply to the reactor's safety system (especially the pump) in the event of a loss of electricity.
The Chernobyl reactor is designed with a pair of diesel generators as a backup power supply, but the diesel generators cannot be started instantaneously, at which point the reactor will use a rotating turbine as an energy source, and the turbine will separate from the reactor and rotate under its own inertia. Tests were conducted to determine whether the turbine could still adequately supply the energy feed pump during the power reduction phase while the diesel generator had not yet been started. This type of test has been successfully performed in other units earlier (all safe supply starts), but the results are not satisfactory (the force generated by the turbine is not enough to power the pump during the reduction phase).
In order to test under safer, lower power conditions, the operator first disconnected the reactor's safety system to ensure that the safety system would not be automatically triggered by experimental operation. At this point, the energy output of reactor No. 4 in Chernobyl was reduced from 3,200 MW of normal power (the International Unit MW, formerly known as 3.2 million kW) to 700 MW. However, since the reactor operator's reduction in energy output was too rapid at the beginning of the experiment, the actual power output dropped to only 30 megawatts at this time, and the resulting fission product, Xenon-135, increased (which absorbed neutrons). Although the speed of power reduction is close to the maximum allowed by the safety regulations, the operator still chooses to continue the experiment. The experiment decided to increase the power by 200 megawatts. To overcome the absorption of neutrons by the remaining Xenon-135, the operators pulled out the number of control rods specified in the safety charter from the reactor.
At 1:05 a.m. on April 26, 1986, the turbine-powered pump was activated, and the flow of water exceeded the safe limit. At 1:19 a.m., the water flow continued to increase, and since the water also absorbed neutrons, the need to manually remove the control rod to increase the neutron reaction rate was required when the water flow increased further, becoming an extremely unstable and dangerous operation. When the energy output was already below the specified minimum, the engineers chose to dismantle the reactor's levers and retain 6 of the 211 levers to speed up the reactor's operation rate. The safety charter requires a minimum number of 30 levers, but this tragedy is caused by the belief that 6 levers are sufficient for the most experienced operators.
The engineers, believing they had re-stabilized the reactor, began their actual test run at 1:23:04 a.m. The unstable state of the reactor was not shown on the control board, and all the engineers were unaware of the danger. At this time, the power of the pump is turned off, the water flow is driven by the inertia of the turbine generator, and the flow rate is reduced. The turbine is separated from the reactor and the amount of steam in the reactor core increases. Since the RBMK graphite mitigation reactor in Chernobyl is specially designed to have a high frontal null coefficient, the weakening of the neutron absorption effect within the reactor increases the power of the reactor rapidly when the water flow slows down.
At 1:23:40 a.m., the operator pressed the AZ-5 ("Rapid Emergency Defense 5") button that commanded the "Emergency Stop Reactor"—all the control rods were ready to be reinserted into the reactor. On the other hand, chief engineer Anatoly M. Dyatlov, who was at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at the time of the accident, wrote in his book: "At 1:23:40, before the centralized control system ... No changes in parameters that could justify an emergency shutdown were registered. Appointed in accordance with the statement... A lot of material was gathered and analyzed, and in its report, it was not determined why an emergency shutdown was ordered. There is no need to look for a reason. The reactor is simply shut down when the experiment is complete. ”
Due to the insertion mechanism of the control rod (18 to 20 seconds of slow completion) and the design structure, the bottom end of the control rod is designed with graphite, and the contact between graphite and water coolant instantly leads to an increase in the reactor reaction rate, and the instantaneous increase in power leads to pipeline deformation, and the control rod is stuck in one-third of the insertion pipe, and the reaction cannot be effectively stopped. At 1:23:45 a.m., the reactor power soared to 33,000 megawatts, which is ten times the normal power value. The fuel rods began to melt, the vapor pressure increased rapidly, causing the steam to explode, the reactor top to shift and be destroyed, the coolant pipe to burst and blow a hole in the roof. In order to reduce the construction costs in the former Soviet Union, the reactor was built in the form of a single protective layer. Radioactive contaminants enter the atmosphere after a steam explosion rupture in the main pressure vessel, and oxygen flows in and binds to extremely hot reactor fuel and graphite moderators – causing graphite fires. Fires allow radioactive material to spread and contaminate a wider area.
At 1:23 a.m. (UTC+3) on 26 April 1986, reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded. Successive explosions triggered fires and emitted large amounts of high-energy radioactive material into the atmosphere, which covered a large area. The disaster unleashed more than 400 times the radiation dose of the atomic bomb that exploded on Hiroshima during World War II.
Immediately after the accident, 203 people were taken to hospital for treatment, of which 31 died, including 28 deaths from excessive radiation. Most of those who died were firefighters and ambulance crews because they were unaware of the dangers of radiation in the wild. In an effort to control the spread of radioactive soot from nuclear power, authorities immediately sent 135,000 people to evacuate their homes, about 50,000 of whom were residents of the town of Pripyat near Chernobyl. The health unit predicts that the proportion of people who receive cancer from 5–12 Ibeck radiation will increase by 2% over the next 70 years. In addition, people have been exposed to radiation and died of cancer as a result of the accident. The disaster, which cost a total of about $200 billion (inflation included), was one of the most costly events in recent history after the Fukushima nuclear accident.