With the start of the war in Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian relations have become the hottest topic of the moment, and we will have many questions if we do not enter, such as:
1) Why is Ukraine so stupid as to believe in the foolishness of Western society to destroy nuclear weapons?
2. Why is Ukraine so stupid as to make enemies of its own homogeneous Russia and surrender to the embrace of Western Europe?
3. Why are Ukrainians so bizarre that they choose a comedian with no experience in governing to be president
In fact, there is only one core of all the problems: why is Ukraine so stupid?
Some netizens even made up this paragraph:
But this question clearly makes two mistakes that most Chinese netizens make when they understand international issues:
1. Anthropomorphize the state and government and give them human emotions
2. Compare the situation in your own country to other countries
Let's start with the first mistake, the anthropomorphism of the state.
The state itself has no emotions, a country is made up of many people, they all have different feelings and opinions, and thus divided into various forces. If the pro-A forces are beneficial to the country, the pro-A forces will naturally be supported; on the contrary, if the pro-A forces are favorable, the pro-B forces will naturally come to power. It is advantageous to aid country C, so it is easy for pro-C people to gain the right to speak in the country. It is advantageous to fight C country, then pro-C people are naturally easy to suppress.
There is a classic saying in international diplomacy: there is no eternal enemy, no eternal friend, only eternal interests.
In fact, this sentence should be said: our friends cannot be in power forever, but our common interests can make everyone in power our friends.
For countries like China and Russia, which have a tradition of centralization, anthropomorphism can sometimes help to understand international relations. But for traditional countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, there will be behavior that is difficult for us to understand. For example, Europe stirs up in Britain, capricious, but growing up in China, we will understand this behavior as a moral problem, but in fact it is only profit-oriented.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is a special country, unlike China, the United States, Britain, and Russia, and is a country with very complex internal relations and a very weak sense of national identity. In this case, if we also imagine Ukraine as a "person", we must feel that this person is schizophrenic.
And the schizophrenia of Ukraine is caused by the special history of Ukraine, and now we go back to twelve hundred years ago and look back at the history of Ukraine.
Location map
Twelve hundred years ago, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus was still a nation, a country, this country is called Kievan Rus', the capital is in today's Ukrainian capital Kiev, and Moscow is only a principality under kievan rus' flag.
Imagine that today's Xi'an Luoyang belongs to another country, what kind of mood we will be, probably understand the Russian obsession.
But then three strong enemies came in from three directions and divided Kievan Rus' apart.
Part of today's Russia was conquered by the Mongol Empire, and Genghis Khan's eldest grandson, Batu, established the Chincha Khanate, historically known as the Golden Horde in Russia. Since then, the Russians have begun two hundred years of anti-Mongolian history, during which there have been many "anti-Mongolian dramas", and Battus has also become the main villain in many film and television dramas.
Battu in the film and television drama
The other two were occupied by Poland and Lithuania, respectively, with the Lithuanian-occupied part becoming today's Belarus and the Polish-occupied part becoming today's Ukraine.
Therefore, the history of the invasion of Russia by Poland and Lithuania is much earlier than the history of Russian aggression against them.
The Grand Duke of Lithuania was more enlightened and did not force the Rus' to change their faith. Poles, on the other hand, were more extreme, forcing Orthodox Rus' converts to their own Catholicism.
This is the source of today's friendly Russian-Belarusian relations and the bad Relations between Russia and Ukraine, and has nothing to do with today's Lukashenkozelensky.
Hundreds of years later, the eldest brother Russia defeated the Mongols and transformed into Tsarist Russia, so he wanted to save his brothers who were occupied and enslaved by others.
At this time, Tsarist Russia suddenly found that the original brother was different from his language, culture, and even religion.
Moreover, Poland was still very strong at that time, and Tsarist Russia only recovered half of Ukraine, and the two sides divided Ukraine by the Dnieper River. This dividing line also had a direct impact on the language and culture of today's Ukraine.
Later, through the division of Poland three times, Tsarist Russia finally recovered all the homeland of Kievan Rus', but at this time, Western Ukraine had been ruled by Poland for more than four hundred years, not only in language, culture and religion, but also in russia, and even different from the eastern Ukraine that "returned" in the early years.
However, in Tsarist Russia, the two parts of the language, culture and religion were still combined into one country, which is now Ukraine.
In 1954, to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the "unification" of Russia and Ukraine, Khrushchev, a Ukrainian who was the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, divided the island of Crimea, which had historically belonged to Russia, to Ukraine. At this time, the two sides belong to one country, and the territorial division is only a change in the administrative divisions within a country, so everyone does not care.
So Ukraine has been a "bulk" region from the beginning, similar to the mainland's Jiangsu Province. Putin's claim that Ukraine is a country created by Lenin is not unreasonable. Just like Anhui, Jiangsu, is two provinces created by man.
However, Jiangsu is only a province on the mainland, so no matter how much competition between northern Jiangsu and southern Jiangsu will not rise to the political level, but Ukraine is different.
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became independent, so we see this strange Ukraine that has no unified language, no unified religion, no common historical memory, and even occupies a territory of Russia.
In such a country, it is difficult for you to expect their people to have any common feelings of home and country, which is really difficult for strongmen.
Because of the extreme division within Ukraine, since the founding of the country, the election in Ukraine has become a struggle between the two major regions of the East and the West, rather than a struggle between two political parties, such a country engages in democratic elections, just like the circle of friends to vote for children, it is completely to see whose parents have more friends.
Still
In the Ukrainian TV series "Servant of the People", there is such a plot, Vasia's father was still beating and cursing politicians one second ago, and the next second he heard that he could receive two hundred yuan by playing banners on the street to support politicians' elections, so he did not hesitate to go to the streets, and even Vasha's students skipped class to help with the election.
So Vasha was furious: What XX democracy, that is, the chaebol pushes out two idiots, and then forces us to choose a normal point among the two idiots, such a president, I can also be.
Later, Vasha's actor Zelenskiy was actually elected president, and he proved with his own actions that none of Vasha's words were wrong.
By the way, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has the same oligarchic problem as Russia, and it is more serious, and the successive presidents of Ukraine, including Zelenskiy, are the spokesmen for the chaebols.
"Servant of the People" is really a divine drama, exposing almost all the social problems in Ukraine, and it is recommended that everyone have time to watch it.
In the play, Vasha changed a number of ministers, but each one was a corrupt official, so Vasha pulled the cleaning security guard he knew at school to be the minister, and it turned out that they were more greedy...
Faced with the reporter's questioning, Vasha said the following paragraph:
Ukrainians are not born villains, but they later find that going to school requires money to give gifts, to find a job requires money to give gifts, and to promote officials also needs to pay money to give gifts, and he will definitely become a villain in this environment. He either had to find a way to make money or leave Ukraine to live abroad.
Some people say that if Ukraine had not given up its nuclear weapons and dismantled its army, what would have happened now, but do any people really believe that such a wasteful and corrupt government would have a powerful army?
In fact, there are not many "bulk" countries such as Ukraine, such as a number of countries in Africa that are divided by a grid ruler, but only Ukraine has become a joke in everyone's mouth, because Ukraine's geographical location is exactly at the junction of the spheres of influence of the two great powers.
There is another similar country in the world, which is North Korea and South Korea.
The DPRK and the ROK have the same language, have more economic and armed forces than Ukraine, and have produced several excellent leaders, but they are still unable to control the fate of their own countries in the disputes between the great powers.
How can Ukraine, which is weaker and more chaotic than the two Koreas, rely on a leader to change the fate of the country's division?
We can't help but sigh that it is so good to be born in the motherland!