The Heartland and the Foundry

The split between the East and West in Ukraine cuts across several layers: Linguistic, cultural, historical, and economic. In the West, the natural inclinations are toward Ukrainian and European culture and values; in the East, Russian norms dominate.
Faultlines are dangerous, because eventually unstable equilibria break up. That may be what is happening in Ukraine now. The protests in favor of Yushchenko in Kiev and major western cities are peaceful for now, but there have been scattered outbreaks of violence in the east, and one region–the industrial core of Donetsk–has voted to hold a referendum on secession, according to Christian Science Monitor.
Writing in the Washington Post, George Will compared Ukraine’s situation, thirteen years after independence, to the threats American unity faced under the Articles of Confederation. But a more apposite comparison is to the American election of 1860, where the thought of living under a Republican president was so intolerable to the South that they chose secession instead. As this New York Times article makes plain, whatever the elites may think of a breakup of Ukraine (and commercial elites are dead-set against it), it’s a real possiblity in the minds of the people. In Kiev, by contrast, Yushchenko’s supporters are restless, and many are reportedly ready to seize government buildings.
Why did the election come to such a pass? Western observers blame Ukrainian media. Christian Science Monitor briefly explains the thesis. Washington Post writes, for instance, that one Russian-language TV channel compared Yushchenko to Hitler; Wall Street Journal, in turn, documents how it was only after an interpreter for the death rebelled on air against censorship that state-run TV began airing what its journalists called, simply, the truth. The demonization of Yushchenko by state- and oligarch-run media has convinced many in Ukraine’s east that his victory will not just determine who runs the government, but will mark the beginning of an all-out assault upon the east’s culture.
We should remember that although Western media and blog coverage has focused on Yushchenko’s supporters, because they are pro-democracy, pro-West and pro-us, Yanukovich is hardly unpopular: New York Times notes that thousands of local officials in the east have vowed to seek independence if Yushchenko wins, and that there are large demonstrations in the industrial centers of the east in favor of Yanukovich.
The situation is growing unstable. By a margin of three votes, Washington Post says, Ukraine’s parliament has voted out the government of Yanukovich, who was still prime minister (and is, I believe, still technically prime minister now, until the appointment of a caretaker government). President Leonid Kuchma, who is possibly serving extra-legally (his term has officially expired), has called for a new vote, but at this point any new elections would take months to organize, raise tensions to a fever pitch, be almost impossible to carry out, and would be extra-legal themselves.
The speaker of the Russian parliament has said Ukraine’s crisis will end in breakup or bloodshed. It need not end up in either, but it may end up in both. Velvet revolutions are historical aberrations, the immediate history of post-Soviet transitions notwithstanding. Suddenly, it is clear that what is at issue is not whether Russia or the Atlantic community will be predominant within Ukraine; crises have a logic of their own, and they always move beyond their initial conditions to envelop ever-broader problems and demands. Only if Europe and the United States combine with Moscow to extract and enforce a pledge of nonviolence and territorial integrity will it become likely that Ukraine will pass safely and swiftly through this period of danger.