Ukraine and Russia, the brother countries of the former Soviet Union, had a big fight. Both of them rejected each other as "injustice". The Russians felt that Ukraine was close to NATO and betrayed the Slav brothers.
And the Ukrainian upper echelons feel that they are today because they were fooled by Russia, so they firmly draw a clear line with Russia.
There is an inextricable knot between Russia and Ukraine, that is, the "Budapest Security Memorandum" signed by the United States and Russia 30 years ago in order to make Ukraine abolish nuclear weapons. After the
memorandum was signed, Ukraine destroyed the country's nuclear bombs , but because of the lack of nuclear weapons , Ukraine later became a pawn in the competition of great powers. During the 30 years of independence, it was pushed to and shoved by the great powers and lost its independent status.
The Ukrainian leader who signed this memorandum was the first president of Ukraine Kravchuk . Today's netizens may not be familiar with this person, but at the end of the last century, Kravchuk was one of the "Big Three of the Soviet Union".
In 1991, he and Yeltsin of Russia, Shushkevich of Belarus Shushkevich signed the " Belovyzh Agreement " and dissolved the Soviet Union.
Speaking of which, Kravchuk was an activist for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He thought that Ukraine would get better and better after the dissolution, but he did not expect Ukraine to go downhill for 30 years, until today it has become a soft persimmon.
In the face of the tragic situation in Ukraine, Kravchuk also complained to the media many times, saying that he regretted his decision that year.
So what kind of person is Kravchuk and why did he push to disintegrate the Soviet Union ? How much does the current tragic situation in Ukraine have to do with him? Regarding the current domestic and foreign troubles in Ukraine, what "smart views" does the former leader have?
1. Kravchuk: A bureaucrat
Kravchuk, Ukrainian , born in 1934 in Rovno in Poland territory.
Regarding the attribution of Rovno, there is actually a period of swing in history.
Rivno was the land of Poland before World War II. After the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union moved westward and ate the eastern half of Poland. Rivno, Lviv , Lutsk and other regions became the Soviet Union. part of Ukraine.
So technically Kranfchuk was born a Polish citizen before becoming a Soviet.
Kravchuk's family was incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, his father joined the Soviet Red Army and later died on the front line.
During the war, Kravchuk took refuge in the rear with his family, and he suffered a lot, and only returned to his hometown after the war.
After the war, the Soviet Union began to rebuild. Kravchuk returned to school to continue his studies. He worked hard in school. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to the Department of Economics of Kyiv University, becoming the first generation of senior intellectuals in the Soviet Union after the war.
In 1958, Kravchuk got his Ph.D. in economics and started working as a lecturer in economics at a school.
In the 1960s, Khrushchev came to power. Although this leader was born in Russia, he grew up in Ukraine and later made his fortune in Ukraine.
Khrushchev is half Ukrainian, so he supported Ukraine very much after he came to power, and even gave Crimea and to Ukraine.
is also at this stage. Young Ukrainian party members and cadres are being promoted within the CPSU.It was during this period that Vchuk entered the senior leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party . After more than 20 years, Kravchuk has been racing all the way in his career, becoming a member of the Central Committee in his 30s, a minister in his 40s, and deputy secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party in the 1980s, specializing in ideological and political construction.
Kravchuk can climb so fast, the first reason is that he has a "red roots".
First of all, Kravchuk has a very clean background after being a martyr; second, because of his outstanding ability, economics in the Soviet era was a golden job and possessed great power.
In the late 1980s, Kravchuk already held the highest power in Ukraine. As one of the most powerful member states of the Soviet Union, he also had a say in the Soviet Union.
But it is incomprehensible that Kravchuk supported the split of the Soviet Union at that time and wanted to separate it out and take the road of Westernization.
As a senior Soviet official, Kravchuk's abnormal thinking actually represents a distorted cultural separation phenomenon.
2. Kravchuk with "red skin and white heart" ruined the Ukrainian economy
At the end of the Soviet Union, Kravchuk and Yeltsin were staunch independents, and the "Belovyzh Agreement" was signed by them. of.
can be regarded as a beneficiary of the Soviet system, a bureaucrat with power, Kravchuk's behavior of "destroying his own job" is incomprehensible.
To analyze Kravchuk's motives, we must understand his origins.
Ukraine is one of the most important member states of the former Soviet Union. There is a big gap between the east and the west of the country. People in the east use Russian, and people in the west use Ukrainian . There are differences in language and culture.
Kravchuk is a Western Ukrainian, and his ancestors are Poles . He is dissatisfied with the Soviet model that obeys everything, and he complains a lot about Ukraine's policy of feeding back the backward regions in the central and western regions.
So he wants to bring Ukraine to independence and become a nation-state, so that Ukraine can become an independent power, he is not a "cadre", but a "head of state".
In 1991, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia became independent, and Ukraine took a large piece of the cake. It has a large number of military and heavy industrial enterprises in the country, and also took away one-third of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons.
In the world at that time, Ukraine's military power ranked in the top 5 in the world, and its nuclear power was in the top 3 in the world, basically second only to the United States and Russia.
And Ukraine's advantages don't stop there. Ukraine is one of the three major black soil belts in the world, and its grain output is arrogant in the world.
There are nearly 80 kinds of mineral raw materials in China, especially the high content of coal, iron, nickel and manganese, which is a natural center of heavy industry.
Judging from the situation in the 1990s, as long as Ukraine plays steadily, maintains its own fundamentals and slowly develops its economy, the whole world has to take it with admiration.
Therefore, including Kravchuk, the whole world believes that a new power will emerge in Eastern Europe, and even Russia is worried that the younger brother will surpass itself in the future.
Kravchuk has always been proud of this, and feels that he has made Ukraine. But under his leadership, Ukraine has done two stupid things: total denuclearization and shock therapy.
After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022, the Ukrainian government has repeatedly expressed regret for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. As a result, Ukraine now loses its strategic deterrence and is bullied by major powers.
In 1991, Ukraine had more than 170 strategic nuclear missiles at independence, andMore than 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons , which are more than the strategic nuclear forces of China, Britain and France.
However, Russia and the United States jointly cheated and used economic support and security commitments as bait to get the Kravchuk government to sign the "Budapest Security Memorandum" to destroy all nuclear weapons.
Kravchuk once told the public that the destruction of these weapons brought economic interests and the promise of nuclear protection from major powers, and Ukraine actually made a profit.
Immediately after that, Ukraine followed the Western recommendations for "shock therapy", and together with Russia, it was half-dead and almost died.
At that time, Ukrainian prices were soaring, oligarch took the opportunity to speculate and made a lot of money by buying and selling national resources, but the common people were emptied of their savings.
In 1994, Kravchuk stepped down amid scolding. Since this year, Ukraine's economy has been slowly recovering by "aiding", mainly because Russia is providing technology and materials for upstream and downstream industries, but the United States has given very little loans. Poor.
Politically, Ukraine lost its bargaining capital and began to be pushed around by big powers. The United States sought Ukraine to be its little brother, while Russia sought to establish a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine.
2004 Orange Revolution Beginning, Ukrainian politics will be revolutionized in every presidential election, swinging between the United States and Russia, until finally the society begins to divide, the Russian cultural circle and the Ukrainian cultural circle are hostile to each other, leading to war.
3. It doesn't matter what happens to Ukraine, I only care about my pension.
In 2014, the square revolution broke out in Ukraine. Since then, there will be no peace in Ukraine. After
took away of the Crimean peninsula in Russia and supported the independence of the Eastern Ukrainian region, Ukraine took a stinky move that is still very inferior today - laissez-faire, and secretly encouraged the rise of the Ukrainian Nazis.
Nazi ideas have always been on fire in Eastern Europe, and there are even skinhead Nazis in Russia.
The Ukrainian Nazi Party used nationalism as a veneer to conjure up the spirit of the German servant army during World War II, and practiced cultural autocracy and racial persecution in eastern Ukraine.
According to statistics, during the eight years of the Udong War, tens of thousands of civilians in the Udong area were attacked by the Nazi army, resulting in thousands of deaths.
Russia has also supported the independence of East Ukraine since 2014. After the 8-year civil war between Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia and Ukraine started a full-scale war.
Ukraine's 30-year decline is in the same vein. Almost all of Ukraine's tricks can be traced back to the Kravchuk period from 1991 to 1994.
But this senior cadre trained by the CPSU was indifferent to the situation in Ukraine.
Kravchuk was interviewed by Russian media in 2019. He mainly complained about the poor economy in Ukraine, so that the pension for veteran cadres was very small, equivalent to 4,500 yuan per month.
But in Ukraine, the average local income is only about 3,000 RMB. In fact, Kravchuk's treatment is already good.
From Kravchuk's words, we can hear the voice of a highly "egoist", and it is no wonder that such people choose to dissolve the Soviet Union.
At the end of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian bureaucracy was highly corrupt, and various privileges, special offerings, and recuperation systems made senior officials feel free.
Coupled with their monopoly on personnel power, the Ukrainian bureaucracy has formed an interest group in the era of feudal bureaucracy and is the vampire of the state.
But they differ from capitalists in that they cannot makeProperty and privileges are inherited.
In the late 1980s, when the standard of living of the Soviet Union began to decline, the people were dissatisfied, and the bureaucrats finally sold the country together so that they could get more benefits.
Kravchuk, Yeltsin, Shushkevich are the representatives of this group, the latter two later became known for corruption.
And Kravchuk, although there is no news of wanton corruption, but he always thinks about his own appearance of one-third of an acre. He is not a politician at all, but more like a businessman.
Kravchuk also said in his later years: "I really want to cut off my right hand. It was the one that signed the agreement to dissolve the Soviet Union." I miss my own power and status at that time.
text / Shang Xueye
References:
1, "Kravchuk: I'd rather cut off my hand than sign the agreement to disintegrate the Soviet Union", Li Shenming, Zhang Shuhua, Su Ruixue ~1994)", So Shangwu