Assimilation is good, except when it isn’t. The lovely Irish should have their Saint Patrick’s Day parades in every city each year, and everyone loves an authentic Italian restaurant, but it had better be regional, and the more obscure the region the better – Tuscany is so last decade. It’s often Celtic night on PBS too – willowy women with odd small harps singing something quite incomprehensible in the artful shadows. That’s cool, and Greek festivals are fine too, even if the traditional pine resin in that odd white wine makes it taste a bit like turpentine. Zorba lives, even if the guy who played that ultimate Greek free-spirit in that 1964 movie was Mexican. That didn’t matter. He did the Greeks proud, which is just as well, as celebrating all things Mexican doesn’t go down too well in much of America. The latest thing to say about this is that all those illegal immigrants from down that way actually want to make all Real Americans their slaves – it’s a clever but well-planned conspiracy to make the rest of support them in lives of lavish luxury, and Obama and the Democrats have been secretly working with them all along. These odd and evil people won’t ever assimilate. They want to take over. They keep speaking their language even when they’re here. One hears Spanish in the streets all the time, after all. They even have the temerity to be proud of their heritage, as if they were Irish or something – but then those who are proud to be German or Japanese have the same sort of problem. They have to answer for that big war, and for Hitler and Tojo. Any local Oktoberfest can easily turn into Kristallnacht, and a few Japanese men chatting with each other on the corner, in Japanese, still makes some Americans queasy. Will another American car company go under? That means that anyone in America who’s even vaguely French actually has it easy. Everyone knows that the French are worthless cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and impossible stylish and elegant, and very cool, damn it.
This assimilation thing is hard. Which people, as a people, are we supposed to care about? Are we supposed to care? Growing up in the early fifties in a Slovak enclave on the dark north side of Pittsburgh didn’t make it easy to answer that question, with one side of the family Slovak and the other side Czech, and not being allowed to speak either language, because the parents wanted you to be an American, and nothing but an American. The first ten years were ten years of not knowing what anyone was saying half the time, even if the Kolachky were good. But we were, undeniably, Czechoslovak folks – except the country had only been thought up in late May, 1918, right there in Pittsburgh.
No, really – the Pittsburgh Agreement was a memorandum of understanding between members of Czech and Slovak expatriate communities here, setting up a country there, in a quiet corner of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a letter of intent that Masaryk took back to central Europe, and that was that. They had a country, and that country quickly developed its own national pride. The handsome and noble and brave Victor Lazlo, in Casablanca, was Czechoslovak, as he should be. And there were odd words about Germans that the parents muttered under their breath – the rough translation was “cockroaches” – words referring to Hitler grabbing the Sudetenland in 1938 and used later in 1968 when the Russian tanks rolled in Prague. Even thoroughly Americanized kids knew something was going on here, but then in the late fifties the family moved to a raw new white-bread suburb, with the tract houses and the big high school with Friday night football and a marching band and all the rest, and none of it mattered much. Assimilation was complete, and then on New Year’s Day, 1993, Czechoslovakia was dissolved, by mutual agreement. The Slovaks got their own country, as did the Czechs. Czechoslovakia had lasted seventy-five years, proud and good, and then it was gone.
The same thing happened to Yugoslavia, except that split involved a nasty war and a lot of wounded pride. Out here in Los Angeles, the Croatians live down in San Pedro, appropriately far from the Serbs out in Alhambra and Monterey Park, and they don’t talk to each other much, even if they share pretty much the same language. Croatians, you see, transcribe everything using the Roman alphabet while the Serbs use Cyrillic – one of endless things to argue about, along with who was really helping the Nazis way back when. Still there was the pride. Back in the eighties, living down in San Pedro, there was something thrilling in listening to the sweet old Croatian folk songs, sung in sweet perfect harmony by everyone in the room, after another dinner at the Croatian Hall down by the docks – and it wasn’t bad being referred to as “The Czech” either, out of completely undeserved respect. Being half-Slovak complicates things, and being, by birth, one of the last actual Czechoslovaks, was just sad.
Now it’s Hollywood and another odd neighborhood, this one filled with Ukrainians, who are a proud people quick to tell you they’re not Russians. The center of this Ukrainian community here is just down the hill, where Fairfax crosses Santa Monica Boulevard and on east for a few blocks. It’s another one of those places of not knowing what anyone was saying half the time, but a bit comforting. Ukrainian sounds a lot like the Slovak from all those years long ago back in that dark valley in Pittsburgh – all Slavic languages sound pretty much the same if you have no clue what’s actually being said. It’s like being a kid again.
That’s fine, and picturesque in its way, but it raises the same question. Which people, as a people, are we supposed to care about, and why? Do Ukrainians count? After all, there seems to a battle over the identity of Ukraine right now, more of a civil war actually, and the United States should probably do something about that, or not. Do we stand with them in what seems to be a democratic uprising, but may not be that at all? The problem is picking sides. If the folks over there can’t decide on the identity of Ukraine by themselves, how can we?
That’s the situation. At the moment, at the close of day, Thursday, February 20, 2014, things are spinning out of control:
Protesters advanced on police lines in the heart of the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, prompting government snipers to shoot back and kill scores of people in the country’s deadliest day since the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago.
The European Union imposed sanctions on those deemed responsible for the violence, and three EU foreign ministers held a long day of talks in Kiev with both embattled President Viktor Yanukovych and leaders of the protests seeking his ouster. But it’s increasingly unclear whether either side has the will or ability to compromise.
Yanukovych and the opposition protesters are locked in a battle over the identity of Ukraine, a nation of 46 million that has divided loyalties between Russia and the West. Parts of the country – mostly in its western cities – are in open revolt against Yanukovych’s central government, while many in eastern Ukraine back the president and favor strong ties with Russia, their former Soviet ruler.
Ah, so this is like 1968 in Prague, and true Ukrainians don’t want the Russian tanks rolling in, except it’s more than that:
Protesters across the country are also upset over corruption in Ukraine, the lack of democratic rights and the country’s ailing economy, which just barely avoided bankruptcy with a $15 billion aid infusion from Russia.
Ah, so it’s not about the Russians at all, but about a corrupt government that screws up everything, and one that can’t even avoid screwing up their response now:
In an effort to defuse the situation, the national parliament late Thursday passed a measure that would prohibit an “anti-terrorist operation” threatened by Yanukovych to restore order, and called for all Interior Ministry troops to return to their bases. But it was unclear how binding the move would be. Presidential adviser Marina Stavnichuk was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the measure goes into effect immediately, but that a mechanism for carrying it out would have to be developed by the president’s office and the Interior Ministry.
The Interior Ministry might tell Yanukovych to stuff it. The military just might go out and mow down the protesters anyway. The big bad guy in charge, Yanukovych, might not even be in charge at all – and no one in particular seems to be in charge of the protesters, and Kiev’s Independence Square is a war zone, and the city is in flames. Everyone is angry and ready to kill, or die, somewhat randomly:
Video footage on Ukrainian television showed shocking scenes Thursday of protesters being cut down by gunfire, lying on the pavement as comrades rushed to their aid. Trying to protect themselves with shields, teams of protesters carried bodies away on sheets of plastic or planks of wood.
Protesters were also seen leading policemen, their hands held high, around the sprawling protest camp in central Kiev. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry says 67 police were captured in all. An opposition lawmaker said they were being held in Kiev’s occupied city hall.
The Interior Ministry said late Thursday that security forces may use force to free the captured police.
And the object of all of this is… something or other. But we in the West have to do something:
In Brussels, the 28-nation European Union decided in an emergency meeting Thursday to impose sanctions against those behind the violence in Ukraine, including a travel ban and an asset freeze against some government officials. It was unclear whether the EU would consider any of the opposition figures to also have a share of responsibility in the bloodshed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama about the crisis Thursday evening. She briefed them about the trip of the three EU foreign ministers to Kiev, and all three leaders agreed that a political solution needs to be found as soon as possible to prevent further bloodshed.
Saying the U.S. was outraged by the violence, Obama urged Yanukovych in a statement to withdraw his forces from downtown Kiev immediately. He also said Ukraine should respect the right of protest and that protesters must be peaceful.
The White House said U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke by telephone with Yanukovych on Thursday afternoon and made clear that the U.S. is prepared to sanction those officials responsible for the violence.
The Kremlin issued a statement with Putin blaming radical protesters and voicing “extreme concern about the escalation of armed confrontation in Ukraine.”
The Russian leader called for an immediate end to bloodshed and for steps “to stabilize the situation and stop extremist and terrorist actions.” He also sent former Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin to Ukraine to act as a mediator.
We’re appalled. Sanctions! Putin says stay out of this. Should we? Which people, as a people, are we supposed to care about, and why? Slate’s Anne Applebaum argues that it’s hard to answer that question:
The Ukrainians have a president, Viktor Yanukovych, who granted himself dictatorial powers and then repealed some of them, announced a truce and then broke it, and claims to enforce the law but employs thugs who haul journalists out of cars and shoot them. The Ukrainian opposition, meanwhile, has three separate leaders who may or may not actually control the Ukrainian protest movement at any given moment.
The opacity helps to explain why Ukraine, after years of stability, has suddenly become violent and unpredictable. It also helps to explain why so many inside and outside the country use historical clichés to describe the situation.
She suggests those clichés are dangerous, like talk about Fraternal Assistance:
This is a Soviet expression, once used to justify the Soviet invasions of Prague in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Fraternal assistance was intended to prevent Soviet puppet states from being overthrown, whether violently or peacefully. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ukraine a “fraternal” country, hinting that he sees it as a puppet state. This week, a senior Russian parliamentarian declared that he and his colleagues are “prepared to give all the necessary assistance should the fraternal Ukrainian people ask for it.” This may well be the cue for pro-Russian organizations inside Ukraine to ask for intervention.
Yep – heard the before – and it’s 1968 again, late summer, a few weeks before heading back to that last year of college. Mom is fixing dinner and muttering that odd cockroach word again, as the tanks roll in Prague. But Applebaum adds a new twist, as now there’s talk of an anti-terrorist operation:
This is a Putin-era expression used to justify the Russian invasion of Chechnya in 1999. An anti-terrorist operation, in this particular context, means that anything is permitted: The term granted Russian soldiers carte blanche to destroy Grozny, the Chechen capital. This is why so many reacted with horror earlier this week when the Ukrainian defense ministry warned that the army “might be used in anti-terrorist operations on the territory of Ukraine.”
And then there’s the old standby, talk of a coup d’état:
This more universal expression has been used since November by both the Ukrainian government and Russian commentators to describe street protests in Kiev and elsewhere. It can mean anything from “peaceful protests that we don’t like” to “protesters using violence against police,” but either way, it is a term being used to justify the deployment of an “anti-terrorist operation” and not necessarily to describe an actual coup d’état.
Oh, and one should not forget Nazis or fascists:
These loaded historical terms have been used by both Russian and Ukrainian officials for many months to describe a wide range of opposition leaders and groups. Fake photographs of nonexistent Hitler posters in Kiev have been circulating online; recently, the Russian foreign minister lectured his German colleagues for, he said, supporting people who salute Hitler. Of course there is a Ukrainian far right, though it is much smaller than the far right in France, Austria, or Holland, and its members have indeed become more violent under the pressure of police clubs, bullets, and attacks.
At the same time, those who throw these terms around should remember that the strongest anti-Semitic, homophobic, and xenophobic rhetoric in this region is not coming from the Ukrainian far right but from the Russian press and ultimately the Russian regime. As historian Tim Snyder has written, “The Ukrainian government is telling itself that its opponents are Jews and telling us that its opponents are Nazis.”
Yep, that’s absurd, but Applebaum is also worried about folks talking about “ethno-linguistic divisions” or a “Yugoslav situation” here:
These are more loaded terms, used in both the West and Russia, to show that the conflict in Ukraine is atavistic, inexplicable, and born of deep ethnic hatred. In fact, this is not an ethnic conflict at all. It is a political conflict and – despite the current opacity – at base not that hard to understand. It pits Ukrainians (both Russian and Ukrainian-speaking) who want to live in a “European” democracy with human rights and rule of law, against Ukrainians (also both Russian and Ukrainian-speaking) who support an undemocratic, oligarchic capitalist regime that is politically and economically dependent on Russia. Some of the regime’s supporters may well believe they are fighting fascists and militant European homosexuals; others may simply fear that deep reforms will cost them their paychecks.
It might be wise to step back:
Either way, this is not a fight over which language to speak or which church to attend. It is a deep, fundamental disagreement about the nature of the state, the country’s international allegiances, its legal system, its economy, its future.
Fine, but what do we do about it? Matt Steinglass, at the Economist, suggests not much:
The most useful thing, I think, is to use it to understand the nature of the threat to freedom we’re seeing these days, in Ukraine and around the world. Viktor Yanukovych is a democratically elected president who has used his powers to eliminate liberal-rights safeguards and jail political opponents on dubious charges. He has reinforced his political position by building cronyistic relationships with powerful business figures. In this system the state creates economic rents and awards them to favored business interests, who in turn buttress the state’s political power, all while maintaining the trappings of democracy.
In other words, Ukraine looks a lot like Russia or Egypt; more significantly, it looks like other states that are in the early stages of similar threats to liberal democracy, such as Turkey and Hungary. The enemy of liberal democracy today is more often kleptocracy, or “illiberal democracy” … than ideological totalitarianism. The threat is less obvious than in the days of single-party states and military dictators. But it ends up in the same place: economic stagnation, a corrupt elite of businessmen and politicians, censored media, and riot police shooting demonstrators.
We’re not fighting megalomania all that much in the world these days – just entrenched and highly-organized rather personal greed. That’s still a deadly threat to liberal democracy, but it’s a new one we have to deal with in new ways, which won’t be easy:
It is not clear that America has the political appetite to do much more than watch and deplore what’s happening in Kiev. It is not clear that the country could accomplish much anyway… So we are left watching the latest in a years-long string of depressing, violent reversals of democracy around the world, from the defeat of the green protests in Iran to the failure of Egypt’s peaceful democratic revolution and the endless succession of red-yellow street battles in Bangkok.
The crackdown in Kiev is perhaps the most depressing of all: the memory of the 2004 Orange Revolution drives home the point that peaceful democratic transitions often don’t stick, and that the spread of the zone of liberal democracy is not inevitable. The most we can do is recognize what the threat to freedom looks like today, impose sanctions, offer asylum to political refugees and make it perfectly clear where we stand, however ineffectually.
These folks freely elected Viktor Yanukovych, and he turned out to be a crook, grabbing all the goodies for himself and his friends, and jailing anyone who complained. The Egyptians overthrow Mubarak and freely elected that Morsi fellow from the Muslim Brotherhood, and he turned out to be a goofy fanatic who wanted to return Egypt to the thirteenth century, and then they cheered when the Egyptian military stepped in removed Morsi, ending the democracy thing there once again – and over here we cheered each step of the way, but a little less loudly each step of the way. It got too confusing. And who do we cheer for here, the folks who want to overthrow the guy they themselves elected? That would strike a blow for freedom, and end anything like democracy there – but we can’t cheer for Putin, the former KGB guy who seems to want to reassemble the old Soviet Union. But we should do something, or at least say something – but what?
Maybe there’s a reason the parents didn’t teach any of us Slovak or Czech way back when, save for one or two words here and there, reluctantly. They seem to have known that pride in “your people” is dangerous, and you don’t let kids play with fire. That is, after all, why Kiev is burning.