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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 7

Publication Date: July 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.97.12712. Alvarez, J. M. S. (2022). Unpredictable Muse: The Ukrainian War and History in Progress in Putin's Russia, the Past Erupts into the

Present. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(7). 803-831.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Unpredictable Muse: The Ukrainian War and History in Progress

in Putin's Russia, the Past Erupts into the Present

José Maurício Saldanha Álvarez

Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil

ABSTRACT

We explore the definitions of the history of the present according to Edgar Moran

and François Hartog. The present is a script in progress and demonstrates the

fluidity of the story. The essay carries out archeology of the Ukrainian war, debating

the past of the Ukrainian contenders, Imperial Russia, and the USSR that always

needed a defensive accentuation around its borders. It incorporated Ukraine,

creating an industrial region and completing its economy despite repression and

Russification. The dissolution of the USSR gave rise to independent countries such

as Georgia and Ukraine, supported by the US and NATO. The essay discusses the

Ukrainian war without demonizing the contenders by explaining Russian leader

Putin's fascination for his country's history. The past that emerges is the archaic

one, demonstrating that Putin wants to control history. Consolidating its nationalist

positions rescues the greatness of the Russian Empire, of the extinct USSR,

reaffirming its country as a world power in the present. US and NATO foreign policy

compromised with the USSR's military actions until the Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan. The American government supported the rebels as it does in Ukraine

and detached his identity from the Russian past by joining the West. The chapter

concludes by showing the time of conflict from the perspective of Giorgio Agamben

and Heidegger as the moment of kairós when taken war decisions.

Keywords: War, USSR, NATO, USA, history, present, nationalism.

“Because we are russian, just fire and destruction. Are well abandon behind as we go. And

fighting beside us, our comrades are dying. And Russians die only the face of the foe.”

Konstantin Simonov, Smolenschina. (1)

“The Ukrainian guerrilla army continues to carry on active propaganda campaign and a

sabotage actes against the Soviets. In the event of a future war, this force could lead the Way to

Ukrainin Independence.” [2]

“But if you receive us, you will have our ships to reinforce you in the struggle." Such were the

words of the Corcyraean”(3) Thucydides,History of Peloponean war, Gutemberg Project.

“A glorious moment, but I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be

pronounced on my own country”. Scipio Aemilianus.(4)

INTRODUCTION

The problem of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is summarized in the phrase of the Roman

general Pompey the Great: “Navigare necesse, vivere non est necesse.”[5] The Portuguese

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 7, July-2022

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

updated these words in the 16th century, navigating with the use of maps and nautical

instruments. The imprecise life as opposed to the exact model. It is the territory of chance, the

unforeseen, and the fortuitous. For the French philosopher Edgar Morin, living is an uncertain

adventure. (6)

The history of the present, as described by François Hartog, is a dark tunnel. A place that Ron

Koolhass designated by the sign: “Work in progress. We apologize for the inconvenience

caused.”(7). The War in Ukraine is a work in progress, prompting hasty, imprecise, and partial

conclusions. It has advances, retreats, warlike choreography, complicated politics, and

diplomacy.

The war in Ukraine is part of a century of losses and recoveries of peripheral territories initially

belonging to Imperial Russia. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 created the USSR leading the

Baltic republics, Finland, Ukraine, and Moldova to independence. Stalin regained part of these

strategic territories with the secret clauses of the German-Soviet pact signed in 1939. (8) The

dissolution of the USSR in 1991, once again removed from the “Russian continent” these

territories where former independence sentiments resurfaced. Their recovery attempted by

Russia will take place in a historically and internationally adverse context.

For Edgar Morin, dismantling multinational empires in the 20th century, such as the Ottoman,

the Austro-Hungarian, and the Soviet, awakened a hidden past. From it emerged practices of

ethnic cleansing and religious exclusion. An example was the division of the former Yugoslavia,

painfully divided into countries hostile to ethnic-religious plurality. (9)

The history of Ukraina, on the other hand, is one of a succession of deferred partitions and

independences. From territorial expropriations, usurpation of wealth. There was also

coexistence in the former USSR of complementary republics between Russians and Ukrainians.

The Maidan revolution that separated Ukraine from Russia, consecrating the European option,

resulted from an operation by US foreign policy and its European allies. It would draw former

USSR countries into the western orbit by repelling the Russian-Soviet past. Their joining NATO

would expand the organization from France to the Russian border. For Pleshakov, this issue is

so severe for Russian diplomacy that a local editorial declared regarding the expansion of

NATO: “We will not let another June 22 happen.” That is, a second Barbarossa invasion, capable

of preventing a Eurasian alliance between Putin's Russia and the People's Republic of China.

(10)

A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT

For Hartog, historicity is composed of the articulation of categories such as past, present and

future, composing a temporal order. (11) The regime of historicity is not a ready-made reality,

but a theoretical tool making the Western experiences of time intelligible. A historian of the

present is a precarious worker, a vigilante watching the passing of the present, this unscripted

and ongoing narrative, striving to understand the ongoing unexpected.

The Ukrainian war reflected in the hasty conclusions of the analyzes in progress, shows the

difficulties inherent in the production of syntheses that take into account the complexities of

the historical development. Our knowledge is disjointed and arranged in watertight disciplines.

If we take as truth the fraction of the visible, these “current affairs” at the surface of events, the

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Alvarez, J. M. S. (2022). Unpredictable Muse: The Ukrainian War and History in Progressin Putin's Russia, the Past Erupts into the Present. Advances

in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(7). 803-831.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.97.12712

result is a multidisciplinary crisis. As happened in the meeting between Alexander and the blind

Indus sages, we will never know the correct shape of the elephant if we stop at partial analyses.

Ending the introductory topic, we will say, like Morin, that human history as history of the

present, marked by the unforeseen is intelligible only a posteriori. (12)

Rereading Thucydides: An Archeology of War

According to Thucydides a war is explained by an archeology of the events where we will

highlight the erga, or acts practiced defining the conflict. The Soviet Union used in its history a

military formula capable of reducing or supplanting threats on its borders, employing the Red

Army after 1945. The first action of this nature took place in 1948, the communist coup d'état

in Czechoslovakia. At this juncture, NATO emerged. It was a defensive entity designed to stop a

Soviet offensive in Western Europe that never took place. And that it is now known would never

happen. However, the USSR unleashed military actions against the countries on its border. In

1956 in Hungary and in 1968 invaded Czechoslovakia. The United States and NATO, respecting

the areas of influence of the USSR, protested without intervening militarily.

Everything changed when the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979. This time, the United States,

taking into account the strength and weakness of the antagonist through Presidents Carter and

Regan, intervened. They did not send troops or advisers into the field. The originality of their

doctrines led them to finance the Afghan guerrilla, equipping it with abundant modern

weaponry, leading the USSR to a military stalemate.

UKRAINIANS AS NUMIDIANS?

After the collapse of communism in the USSR many “half-forgotten national conflicts re- emerged,” as in Ukraine. (13) This time, as if Moscow were Carthage, the US and NATO were

Rome, the Ukrainians would play the role of the Numidians. This North African people attacked

by Carthage, invoke the help of Rome. And Rome between 149-146 BC besieged and destroyed

Carthage. Now, to besiege Moscow there won't be a Scipio Aemiliano, siege machines or Roman

legions. Every week the depressing spectacle of arms marketing presented by the great powers

appears on the news. The US and UK missiles and the French Caesar cannon appear in the shop

windows.

The reaction of NATO and the United States against Russia employs three successful formulas.

Initially the one practiced in Afghanistan: sending sophisticated weapons to the invaded

country to strike the invader. The others were applied in countries out of the former USSR. They

provide for the use of economic sanctions and the action of intelligence agents on the ground.

They interact with disaffected local currents and inflate them, creating mass media movements.

Finally, by manipulating electoral results, they destabilize the antagonist.

FROM THE URSS TO RUSSIA

In 1919 the nascent USSR lost its peripheral defense belt to the West. It was inherited from

Czarism made up of countries like Poland and Finland and the Baltic countries. Internally, the

economy of the USSR accelerated with central planning. Between 1920 and 1960, its growth

rate surpassed that of Western nations. All production was hierarchical and controlled by the

state. Its institutions fully integrated economic activities into the system. (14)