Democracy or dictatorship? The moral call to defend Ukraine by Hans-Herbert Kögler

Abstract

Ko ¨gler has written a scathing critique of the attempt by the Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin to legitimize the Russian attack on Ukraine (Ko ¨gler, 2023). Ko ¨gler asserts that both Dugin's theory and President Putin's action are 'embedded in and inconceivable without a nationalistic cultural essentialism analysis, which ideologically supports the geopolitical claims of territorial domination via the symbolic ideal of the uniquely Russian national character'. In consequence, says Ko ¨gler, this led to politics seeking the total elimination of Ukrainian culture and identity. He says Putin's 'imperial Eurasian ideology includes Dugin's cultural essentialism'. I am sceptical as to Dugin's influence on Putin, for which Ko ¨gler gives no evidence. But his obsession with a philosophy that borders on the metaphysical reveals a cultural essentialism of his own, neglecting the more material specifics of the invasion and the dynamics of war itself. I would add more down to earth historical, geopolitical and political aspects of this invasion.Firstly, history. Ukraine had been tied to Russia for most of its history. The 'Kievan Rus' state with a single dominant language and centred in Kiev lasted from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. It was succeeded by many smaller realms and the single language diverged into Ukrainian and Russian versions. Political dominance shifted from Kiev to Muscovy. Kiev was reunited with Russia at the end of the seventeenth century, and most of Ukraine was absorbed into Russia in the course of the eighteenth century.