I have noticed an interesting thing: almost all readers who negatively reacted to my posts about the Soviet Union are supporters of Putin’s Russia in the conflict with Ukraine.
This once again proved to me that in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions there is now not so much a war between separatists and government forces, and not even between Ukraine and Russia. There is an ideological war. The “Soviet” and “Western” ideologies are fighting.
Inside Ukraine there were and, still are, adherents of both points of view. It was between them that the main conflict occurred. One part of Ukraine wanted to live in a western way, and the second part wanted to live as before, the “Soviet style”.
In many countries, including Kazakhstan, and even in the US and Europe there are adherents of the socialist idea who believe that society is superior to the individual, that the state must own the basic means of production (land, factories, railways, etc.), that there should not be rich and poor people. Also in almost all countries there are adherents of liberal ideology who believe that the individual should have more freedom from society, that the smart and the strong should be richer, and the weak and the lazy should be poorer, that private entrepreneurship, rather than public administration, is the engine of economy development and so on.
In most countries, these ideologies get along without colliding, constantly arguing with each other, transforming each other, resulting into something average, compromising.
Ukraine just was unlucky because, firstly, the turn to the Western way of life took place in a revolutionary, quick way. The overthrow of Yanukovych has become a powerful catalyst for long-matured processes within the country. And secondly, it was unlucky because it is geographically close to the main stronghold of the socialist (“Soviet”) way of life in the world – Russia. The transition of Ukraine to another ideology, unfortunately, in this case also means major changes in the political, economic and even military alignment of forces in this region. This, in my opinion, made Russia intervene in this process.
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