The historical context of the conflict in Ukraine

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Up next, some background to the conflict. It’s the long history between Russia and Ukraine that has apparently allowed Vladimir Putin to feel justified in his attempt to annex more of Ukraine.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Joining us now with insight on that history is Mark McCarthy. He is a Professor of History at Dordt University in Iowa. He is an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe. Professor, good morning!

MARK MCCARTHY, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: What happened when the communists took over Russia and later when the Soviet Union fell? What happened to Ukraine?

MCCARTHY: Well, when the Bolshevik Revolution took place in November-October of 1917, the Ukrainians actually managed to have a brief period of independence. They were independent of Imperial Russia till eventually the Bolsheviks reestablished control in Russia and eventually re-took, reconquered Ukraine and brought it back under Soviet control.

BROWN: Now that we have the background, explain why Putin thinks Ukraine should be a part of Russia now.

MCCARTHY: Well, it goes back to the birth of the Russians, the Ukrainians. They all trace their birth back to the same place, which was old medieval Kievan Rus. And they both see that as their birthplace. Now, the issues get really complicated. It gets involved in the Mongol conquest of Eastern Europe. But when the Mongol conquest begins to recede, what happens is we have a new territory that arises in the northeast. It is Muscovy, later Russia. And that is distinct from Ukraine. Yet they both look back to this time of medieval Kievan Rus and even Imperial Russia. They tended to ignore Ukrainian ideas of being independent. Academics in Imperial Russia deny that Ukrainian was a language. They thought it was simply something spoken by uneducated peasants with a funny accent. And so you have the Russians who look back to this area of the world, they see it as their birthplace, which it is, but it's also something different. It's Ukraine. Because when the Russians emerged after the collapse of the Mongols, they were different. They were changed. And so you've got these two different competing ideas about the territory of the Ukraine.

BROWN: Evangelicals seem to have a stronger presence in Ukraine than in neighboring countries . What’s the history of evangelicalism in Ukraine?

MCCARTHY: The history of evangelicalism, a lot of it gets traced back to Catherine the Great when she had taken much of this territory from the Ottomans. And she realized that she had pushed the Ottomans out but she needed people to populate it. And what she ended up doing was inviting a bunch of ethnic Germans who were Mennonites, who were having problems in Germany because the German state increasingly wanted them to serve in the military and the Mennonites were pacifists. And so Catherine the Great being ethnically Russian herself, said look, Mennonites, German Mennonites, I need people to be successful living in this part of my empire. I'll grant you freedom of religion, freedom to live how you want, but you need to come here and begin to become successful farmers. And that's where a lot of where you see the roots of Ukrainian evangelicalism traces its roots to is these ethnic German Mennonites who were invited in under the time of Catherine the Great to set up to be successful farmers. And the issue was that they were prohibited from proselytizing. They were not supposed to reach out to others. But others, as they began to see the success of these German Mennonites, began to be attracted to these ideas. And that's one area where you see the emergence of evangelicalism in Ukraine is it goes back to these German migrants who came in under Catherine the Great. And the Ukraine, again, on the border, has always been open to ideas coming out of the west, much more so than Russia. And so you see this establishment there, but Ukraine historically, for the past 30 years has had a much more enlightened attitude when it comes to religious pluralism and religious freedom than the Russians have had. And so briefly, in 2014, when you had the Maidan Revolution, the interim leader of Ukraine was an evangelical for a couple weeks.

BROWN: Mark McCarthy has been our guest today. Mark, thank you.

MCCARTHY: You’re welcome.

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