From the Carpathian Mountains to the Urals, there are no mountains. Consequently, Eastern Europe is a vast plain in which many peoples have passed and sometimes settled without the relief allowing to delimit the borders of their territory. Poland, Moldavia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and the European part of Russia are corridors of passage whose history is dominated by flows. Most of these states back onto a sea or a mountain. Only Belarus and Ukraine have no natural borders.
When the Versailles Peace Conference attempted to establish borders in Eastern Europe at the end of the First World War, it did not succeed. Depending on whether historical, linguistic, ethnic or economic criteria were used, different maps should have been devised, but the interests of the victors (the United States, France, the United Kingdom) were contradictory, so that the decisions taken satisfied only half of the people concerned. Even today, the problem can be turned around in all directions: the borders of Belarus and Ukraine are and will remain artificial. This is a very special situation, difficult to understand for people with a long national history.
Once this is established, it must be admitted that neither Belarus nor Ukraine can be nations in the usual sense of the term, which does not mean that they cannot be states. Ukrainian nationalism" is an artificial ideology that can only be built by rejecting other peoples. This is what the Banderists did during the interwar period and still today against the "Muscovites" or "Great Russians". This form of nationalism can only be destructive. The example of Belarus shows that another way is possible. (more...)
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