Today marks the 34th anniversary of the national referendum in which 92% of Ukrainian voters approved the declaration of independence made by Ukraine’s Supreme Council (Verkhovna Rada) on 24 August 1991. To mark this date, a manifesto has just been published that was drawn up by a fairly diverse committee of co-authors, with prominent signatories including writers, activists, media people, and academics. (Apparently there was plenty of disagreement on the details, and in the end a certain tension between details and generalities is evident. There’s a venerable tradition of that sort of thing in the history of the Ukrainian People’s Republic with its four “Universals” and other declarations.)
The manifesto, entitled “Survive. Endure. Prevail!” (“Вижити, вистояти, перемогти!”), has been published by Ukraïnska Pravda and can be read in English here. It compares two concepts of Ukrainian victory — “victory at its maximum” and “minimum victory” — and calls for the latter, more attainable one to have three dimensions:
- The military dimension: strategic neutralisation of the enemy
- The political dimension: preservation of our sovereignty
- The human dimension: a successful Ukraine
Each is spelled out in ways that sound reasonable, if it were not for the fact that the world they are aiming for — a world of sovereign nation-states, each of which is a land “of opportunity, based on the rule of law and an effective system of public governance” — is an ideal that has never quite existed in reality (at least at the world scale) and that, if it has (at regional scales), is already slipping out of our hands.
That’s not to fault the authors. It’s a vision worth upholding and orienting oneself around, especially when their country is engaged in an existential struggle for survival and is aiming to corral more support from the community of developed western nations on which that survival depends. If it lacks a certain acknowledgment of how the world has changed and the difficulties it is facing, it doesn’t lack them entirely. It acknowledges a “broader global crisis” that includes “the rise of a global coalition of dictatorships, an ambivalent U.S. foreign policy, crises of democracy in multiple countries, a devaluation of international law and of the world order as a whole.” At the same time, by introducing these as part of a “crossroads between exciting opportunities for development and unprecedented threats to human existence” (my emphasis), it fails to capture the actual state of the world.
The challenges I have in mind are not something to be breezed over. They are existential, and both political — loss of faith in the liberal democratic contract around which the world-system has ostensibly been built — and ecological, with the climate crisis marking something like the final nail in the coffin of the extractivist resourcism of the last four centuries. The “exciting opportunities for development” mentioned in the manifesto’s second paragraph feel like a sop to the powers that are running rampant in the world — like the Trump administration, with its eagerness to mine Ukraine’s or Russia’s fields and offshore waters for rare earth minerals, gas and oil pipelines, and other business opportunities.
In this sense, reading the manifesto feels a bit like reading the distress signal from a sinking boat to a much larger one that’s also sinking, though more slowly, and which could at least help this one in its immediate emergency.
In their penultimate paragraph, the authors write:
Our final exit from the “Russian world” and return to Western civilisation will be a historic victory not only for Ukraine, but also for the West itself and ultimately for the whole world: a world with one less aggressive predator and one more large and free state. A world with more security, freedom and prosperity.
If only “the West itself” were still recuperable and its “security, freedom and prosperity” assured.
The key strengths of the manifesto are, to my mind, two. The first is in connecting these three dimensions together — the military (which, for Ukraine, is existential), the political (which is the formal reason why the existential struggle is worthwhile), and the human (which is what can make that formal reason a real one). The second is in some of the detail provided for the human dimension.
In such a Ukraine, the state is human-centred — a service state with inclusive political and civic institutions, where the state is “owned” by society. A human-centred state prioritises human rights, cares for those who cannot care for themselves, guarantees equal opportunities for all. [. . .] The country has a mature, self-reliant and horizontal civil society, where dignity and initiative are valued and all citizens are equal before the law. Human-centredness manifests itself in the wellbeing and happiness of every person and family.
In a human-centered state, the manifesto continues, members of the armed services “can fully realise their potential, have appropriate protection, and their families are safeguarded and provided for.” Culture is recognized “as the domain where identity is formed” and “new breakthrough meanings are created”; “justice is a public good”; and there is “strong local self-government, where every community and every region is self-sufficient, and yet together we form a harmonious and integral state.”
As for whether that should be “a country with an export-oriented, free economy that attracts investment,” the verdict is still out on whether “developing” countries that aspire to such a model will share the results of those investments in ways that contribute to their “human-centeredness.”
But I’m quibbling. Perhaps it’s the level of detail, mixed with that certain level of generality, that encourages me to do that. And perhaps it’s just the question of the audience this is aimed for. It’s not a manifesto that would build up a country (Ukraine) from within. Nor is it (as with some manifestos) one that proposes a new direction for the world, in which the authors aim to become leaders instead of followers.
It is, rather, a manifesto intended to remind others that what it is fighting for is relevant to them. That those others (western countries) are hardly united on the generalities is a problem that a manifesto like this cannot hope to overcome.
The manifesto is worth reading and sharing. You can find it here.
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