BORDERLAND

A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

ANNA REID

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For Charles

A W&N PAPERBACK
First published in Great Britain in 1997
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This paperback edition published in 2015
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
an imprint of Orion Books Ltd,
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, ec4y 0dz
An Hachette UK company
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Anna Reid 1997, 2015
The right of Anna Reid to be identified as the author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
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photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the copyright owner.
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is available from the British Library.
isbn 9781780229270
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www.orionbooks.co.uk

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 PREFACE TO 2015 EDITION

This book gives two accounts of Ukraine, separated by a gap

of twenty years. I wrote the first Part One of this edition
in the mid1990s, as the country ventured on independence.
The text stands as originally published, complete with my
then judgements and predictions some, it turned out, quite
prescient, others mistaken. Part Two, completed in early
2015, covers events since, leaving Ukraine in the midst of a
financial crisis and a proxy war with Russia. Its concluding
argument that with help Ukraine actually has a chance of
emerging stronger from these disasters, and finally turning
itself into a mainstream European country is another hos
tage to fortune.
The current crisis kicked off in early 2014, when a pop
ular revolution, nicknamed the Maidan for the Kiev square
where it began, threw out the countrys Russiasponsored,
flagrantly criminal president. Russias response was to send
in the army, first invading Crimea, then promoting a separa
tist insurgency in the eastern Donbass. Crimea fell without
a whimper. In the Donbass, at the time of writing, fighting
alternates with Germansponsored peace talks. Over 5,400
Ukrainian civilians and military have been killed so far, and
there may be more deaths to come: Russian troops and heavy
weapons are massed on the border, apparently readying for a
new offensive. One of the few prominent Russians to speak
out against the war the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov
has just been assassinated under the walls of the Kremlin.
Tens of thousands of Russians marched in protest, some car
rying placards with the words Ukraine, forgive us. But they
are a small minority: the Crimean takeover in particular is
immensely popular, and Putins approval ratings are at an
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Borderland

alltime high. Watching from the sidelines, Western govern

ments dither, hoping that economic sanctions will persuade
Putin to draw back, but deeply uncomfortable with the idea
of arming Ukraine if they do not.
Burnedout tanks and buses full of refugees are only part
of the picture. In other ways, the changes of the past twenty
years have been strikingly for the better. Though thanks to
Putin, Ukrainians are having to readapt to currency crashes
and power cuts, the sepulchral Kiev of the 1990s is ancient
history. Today the city has the bustle not of selfaggrandizing,
blingandgrime Moscow, but of studenty, happyinitsskin
Krakow or Prague. Twenty years ago, I rarely met a Ukrainian
who had travelled abroad. Now, everybody under the age of
fifty seems to be bi or trilingual, and to be coming and going
between Kiev and points west seldom to the old Soviet
Union. Even outside the big cities, people are visibly rather
wealthier than the gloomy official figures suggest, the tax
system having forced up to half the economy into the black
market.
Palpable is the feeling that Ukraine is now solidly and indis
putably a real country. Two generations can no longer remem
ber or even conceive of rule from Moscow. For them there is
nothing comic or surprising about the idea of a Ukrainian par
liament, foreign ministry or supreme court the institutions
may be loathed, but their existence is taken for granted. Two
strands of national identity have come into being. The first,
though passionately proEuropean, harks back to Ukrainians
long struggle against foreign rule, and has a small but nasty
farright fringe. The second, which powered the Maidan and
dominates the current government, is about values rather
than ethnicity. Being Ukrainian, for the hordes of patriotic
young people manning a starburst of new charities and cam
paign groups in the capital, is not about what your surname
is or what language you speak. It is about making a moral
choice, about wanting a decent country and being a decent
person. They are proud that the Ukrainian journalist who
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Preface to 2015 edition

initiated the Maidan is Afghan by background, and that the

first two demonstrators shot dead by police were ethnically
Belarussian and Georgian.
I dont know what will happen to Ukraine. The new gov
ernment probably the best it has had since independence
may actually implement longneeded reforms, or prove as
dysfunctional and oligarchridden as its predecessors. Putin,
even if he makes peace in the Donbass, shows every sign of
continuing to destabilise the country, using his usual polit
ical chicanery. Another possibility is terrorism: city centre
bomb blasts are a new development.
To withstand this, Ukraine will need help financial, tech
nical and perhaps military on a greater scale than the West
is as yet giving it. The alternative is not that the country
sinks quietly back into Moscows embrace, but that it frays
into bitterness, violence and mass emigration. Drunk on ag
gressive nationalism, Russia seems beyond saving, at least for
the present. Ukraine, with its eminently friendly and sensible
aim of replicating the Polish success story, is not. Get it right,
and we will benefit Ukrainians, ourselves and perhaps, by
force of example, in time Russians too. During the Maidan,
protestors tore down the statue of Lenin that stood oppos
ite Kievs Bessarabsky market. Still standing is a postSoviet
statue of Sholem Aleichem, whose bittersweet stories of
shtetl life inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Things are never as
good as they seem, goes a JewishUkrainian saying, but then
they are never as bad as they seem either.

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