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| The Capture of Batoche - French Metis vs English Colonialists (borrowed from Wikipedia) |
My great-grandfather lived his entire
life on and near the banks of the
Dnieper River, inside the area we now know as Ukraine, specifically on the outskirts of current-day Zaporozhye:
In 1789 Mennonites from Prussia
accepted an invitation from Catherine the Great and settled in what became the Chortitza Colony, northwest of Khortitsya island. Mennonite-owned mills and
factories were built in Alexandrovsk and later expropriated by the
Communist government. After the Russian Revolution [they] emigrated,
fled as refugees, or were deported from the area. Currently few
Mennonites live in Zaporozhye. Mennonite buildings still exist in the
area and in the other main Mennonite colony center, current day
Molochansk. (A cursory and mainly accurate account from Wikipedia)
It
wasn't the Mennonites' religion so much as their ethnicity and their
economic dominance that rankled the Russian authorities in 1914 and onward, and for which
their lives were gradually made unbearable. My family had left much earlier. After my
great-grandfather died, his widow and offspring emigrated and settled
in the Rosthern area in 1892-3.
Note
that it was Moscow that called all the shots for the region we now
call Ukraine, not Kiev.
The
degree to which ethnicity and language continue to act as divisive
markers continues to be as tragic a presence in the region as it was
when the Russian Revolution overran the area. Putin's excuse for
sending troops into the Crimea is ethnically driven in part--along
with strategic considerations, of course:
“Putin has defied calls from
the West to pull back his troops, insisting that Russia has a right
to protect its interests and Russian-speakers in Crimea and elsewhere
in Ukraine.”
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-president-sounds-alarm-as-russian-military-gains-ground-in-crimea-1.2556858)
The
psychology of all this is complicated, but it's probably safe to say
that my German-speaking ancestors fared better in Canada than they
did under absolutist monarchies and communist dictatorship because
here they had landed in a working democracy with a bit of experience
in multiculturalism and multiethnicism.
They were scorned for their unwillingness to bear arms during the
World Wars, but the most Canada would do to express this resentment was to require their participation in forced labour camps as
“conscientious objectors.” (Herding Japanese-Canadians into
concentration camps was another matter; being of European descent
apparently stood for something.)
It's
easy to come to too-broad conclusions about the conflict in Ukraine.
Some media are portraying it as Russia and the West engaging in a
tug-of-war for the hearts and minds—and the loyalties—of
Ukrainian citizens. Others interpret it economically: Ukraine is an
economic basket case currently dependent for survival on outside
help, some preferring that it come from the East (the ethnically
Russian), and some looking westward for a better, more modern future
(the ethnically Ukrainian). It's probably accurate to say that
whatever the immediate causes of the conflict, the deeper ones
are a combination of grinding dissatisfaction with national poverty
and ethnic and political animosities reaching way back in history to
the Czars and the old Soviet Union.
The
closest we come to the Russian/Ukrainian divide here in Canada has to
be the French/English “situation.” As in the Ukraine, we have
here two distinct groups, both of which are large enough to affect
the economic, nationalist aspirations of the other. It's probably
naive to think that the kind of dangerous confrontation currently
building between the two groups in the Ukraine could never occur in
Canada, hard to imagine as that may be. Perhaps it seems so unlikely
because there are elements in a working democracy that keep us
reaching for negotiated conclusions and not for rifles. It's been a
long time since we resorted to guns to settle differences here in
Canada; where I live, since 1885 at Batoche and Duck Lake.
As
for protesting and ousting the government through demonstrations,
have you been outside today? It's a frozen hell out there!
Harper,
you're safe until the next election, at least. That's the way we deal
with unpopular leaders here in Canada. Yawn.
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