The International Politics of Eurasia: V. 5: State Building and Military Power in Russia and the New States of Eurasia by S. Frederick Starr & Karen Dawisha

Author:S. Frederick Starr & Karen Dawisha [Starr, S. Frederick & Dawisha, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration, General
ISBN: 9781315483757
Google: vL4YDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32207029
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Civil-Military Relations Prior to the Disintegration of the FSU

The campaign to launch separate Ukrainian armed forces was begun in Ukraine in autumn 1989 by radical right nationalist groups, especially, but not exclusively, in western Ukraine. When nationalist groups first espoused such radical demands they were criticized as “provocative” by leading democratic figures, such as the writer and poet Ivan Drach.4

Between 1989 and 1991, the demands espoused by these small nationalist groups were first taken up by mainstream opposition groups, such as the Ukrainian Popular Movement, Rukh, and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union (renamed the Ukrainian Republican Party [URP] in April 1990) and later even by the national communist wing of the nomenklatura. Within ten months, these demands were included in the 16 July 1990 Declaration of Republican Sovereignty. Fourteen months later, Ukraine declared independence and began to launch its own armed forces in the face of opposition from Moscow.

Historical experience supported the nationalist demand for separate armed and security forces, a demand that was echoed by a wide spectrum of public opinion, democratic opposition, and the national communist nomenklatura. Andrii Haisins’kyi, a commander in the National Guard, pointed out that “from history we know that the UNR [Ukrainian National Republic], Sub-Carpathian Rus’ and the western UNR were broken up precisely because they did not solve the crucial question—they did not form their own army.” Another author pointed to the “need to prevent a Ukrainian repeat of 1920.”5

In addition to the need to avoid repeating historical mistakes, two other arguments were mustered in favor of separate Ukrainian armed forces. First, a sense of urgency pervaded the state-building process due to the widely held fear that this was the last chance, after repeated failures and centuries of Russification and ethnocide, to achieve an independent state. Second, the need for a separate armed forces and the urgency of state-building were a direct outgrowth of the perceptions of threat within the loose and uneasy alliance of anticommunist groups and national communists that had propelled Ukraine to independence in late 1991. This perception of threat toward the state and nation was directed at Russia, a threat brought sharply into focus by its demands for border changes almost immediately after Ukraine declared independence on 24 August 1991.

The launching of the Ukrainian armed forces after the Declaration of Independence, therefore, did not occur within a vacuum. Democratically controlled councils elected in March 1990 and the Ukrainian parliament under Leonid Kravchuk’s chairmanship from July 1990 to August 1991 had already outlined the legal and intellectual basis for Ukraine’s right to possess separate security forces.

On 30 July 1990, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a resolution that called for Ukrainian conscripts to serve only in Ukraine, while on 10 October 1990 another resolution demanded that all Ukrainian conscripts currently serving outside the republic be allowed to return to serve in Ukraine. This demand referred particularly to Ukrainian conscripts serving in “hot spots” of ethnic conflict and was supported by the activities of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Youth (SNUM) aimed at preventing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.