Serhii Plokhy
speaker
375 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Serhii Plokhy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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But there is also realization and very strong realization that the country has to stay united. And certainly the behavior of Zaluzhny himself is there basically not suggesting any sort of a Prigozhin type of scenario. That gives me some hope, actually a lot of hope. And in terms of whether Zelensky's days are numbered or not, I don't think they're numbered.
But if Ukraine stays a democracy, and I believe it will stay, what comes to my mind is the story of Churchill, the story of de Gaulle, in Poland, the story of Piłsudski. So once the war is over, really, the electorate in the democratic elections, they want to change the political leadership. They want to move forward.
But Piłsudski came back to power, and de Gaulle came back to power, and Churchill came back to power. So no, whatever happens in the short run or medium-term run, I think that Zelensky days in politics are not numbered.
Next month we're supposed to take place Ukrainian elections. They're not taking place. Because the majority of Ukrainians don't think this is the right thing to do, to change the president, to have the elections, to have a political struggle in the middle of the war. So Zelensky refused to call those elections despite the fact that he is and continues to be the most popular politician in Ukraine.
So it would be to his benefit, but that's clearly not what the Ukrainians want. But the question of continuing as the president beyond five years also, one way or another, would raise questions about the legitimacy. And certainly, certainly Russia will be playing this card like there is no tomorrow.
And what I would be interested in asking Zelensky about, whether he sees that his second term, which comes on those conditions,
would suggest a different attitude toward the opposition, maybe some form of the coalition government like it was the case in Britain with Churchill, under different circumstances, of course, or this is basically, in his opinion, something that would be destructive and something that would would really be an impediment for the question of unity and war effort.
And I would ask this question not to basically suggest that that's the way to go, but I would be very much interested to hear what his thinking about that is.
I think that there is a possibility of that, right? In the conditions of any democracy, any emergency. The war, in the case of the Soviet Union, there was a Chernobyl disaster and so on and so forth. You make decisions much faster. You create this vertical, and then it's very easy to get really used to that way, dealing with the issues in the conditions of emergency, right?
And then the continued emergency Or with no emergency, they are continuing the emergency mode. I think, again, that would be a very natural thing for any human being to do to make it easier. Should I do that easier and in a more effective way, or should I do it the right way? That's a challenge. Sometimes it's difficult to answer this question.
And suddenly it's easy to realize that actually you can't rule in any other way. Whatever skills you had of people around that can help is that already gone.
As a historian, I have a lot of questions, and I have questions about when the decision was made to attack Ukraine and what went into this decision, because we are thinking about that, we are trying. So as a historian, I have this big question. I have a question about the Crimea, when those decisions were made.
So, that sort of questions that interest me, but the rest, either I think that I understand what is going on with him, or I don't expect the answer that can help. For example, a good question, whether you regret or not the start of the war in 2022, given the enormous, enormous casualties on both sides. but you can't expect from a politician an honest answer to this question, right?
So there are questions to which I know he can't answer honestly. And then there are other questions to which I think he already provided all answers that he could. So what for me is of interest are basically questions for a historian about the timing and the logic of particular decisions.
Not in the form of the Russian Empire, not in the form of the Soviet Union, but certainly in some form of the Russian control. That's, for me at least, it's quite clear. Otherwise, there would be no busts to the Russian emperors and Catherine and Peter and others.
Solzhenitsyn clearly identifies himself as Russian. And his opposition to the communist regime was opposition of a Russian nationalist. So his argument was that communism was bad for Russia.
And for him, Russian question is about the Russians, ethnic Russians, but also he was thinking about Russians in Putin's terms, or Putin thinks in Solzhenitsyn's terms, about Ukrainians and Belarusians constituting part of that.
So the Russian question is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century, the division of the Russians, the loss of the statehood and division of the Russians between different states. This is for Solzhenitsyn, Russian question. And his original idea and plan was presented in the essay that he published in 1990, which was called How We Should Restructure Russia.
And restructure Russia meant getting rid of the Baltics, Central Asia, and Caucasus, and have Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, including those who live in northern Kazakhstan, to create one nation-state. He was a Russian nationalist, but he was thinking about Russian nation-state as the state of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed and his idea was not implemented, in the 1990s he formulated Plan B, taken over by Russia of Donbass, Crimea, and southern Ukraine. the areas that now are included in the Russian Constitution.
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