The collision of sovereignty: A debate over nationhood and historical unity

“ The national State is alone invested with the attributes of sovereignty. There is nothing above it. National rights must be final. The national State may for the time being limit its absolute sovereignty by international agreements, but any such agreements are only conditional and temporary—rebus sic stantibus. ”

“ The State and Its Sovereignty.—The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. ”

“ I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. ”

“ Most of the country no one has ever even seen. The “collective mind” is shown to be a fiction. A people does not form a “person,” but remains only a group of individuals. And the corollary seems to be that the only ground on which to posit a nation has been taken away. The state is said to be unreal and artificial. Peoples may be the product of history; a state can be made in a day. Ponsonby looks upon a nation as such a construction: “A nation is not in its composition primarily a geographical nor a racial, but a political unit. ”

“ Any country always has plenty of problems, especially the more unstable states, or states with a complicated regime. Problems do exist, still it is not clear why they should be used to destabilise and break down a country – something we see rather frequently in various parts of the world.
Frequently the forces used here are radical, nationalist, often even neo-fascist, fundamental forces, as was the case, unfortunately, in many post-Soviet states, and as is the case with Ukraine now. What we see is practically the same thing. ”

“ Thus, in early 1918, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic was proclaimed and asked Moscow to incorporate it into Soviet Russia. This was met with a refusal. During a meeting with the republic's leaders, Vladimir Lenin insisted that they act as part of Soviet Ukraine. On 15 March 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) directly ordered that delegates be sent to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, including from the Donetsk Basin, and that “one government for all of Ukraine” be created at the congress. ”

“ When the USSR collapsed, many people in Russia and Ukraine sincerely believed and assumed that our close cultural, spiritual and economic ties would certainly last, as would the commonality of our people, who had always had a sense of unity at their core. ”

“ Ukraine used to possess great potential, which included powerful infrastructure, gas transportation system, advanced shipbuilding, aviation, rocket and instrument engineering industries, as well as world-class scientific, design and engineering schools. ”

“ It was the Ukrainian authorities who wasted and frittered away the achievements of many generations. We know how hardworking and talented the people of Ukraine are. They can achieve success and outstanding results with perseverance and determination. And these qualities, as well as their openness, innate optimism and hospitality have not gone. The feelings of millions of people who treat Russia not just well but with great affection, just as we feel about Ukraine, remain the same. ”

“ States.are more or less under the influence of others. There are also states which have certain of the attributes of sovereignty, but are subject to servitudes or burthens imposed by treaty, usage,
or force. Feudalism had a phraseology to express the varieties of fiefs which existed under it; modern international law has no generally-accepted terminology for the still greater variety of states which now exist. These varieties tend to multiply, and it is difficult to reduce them all to a few types. The theory that states are equal, and possess all the attributes of sovereignty, was never true. ”

“ A State that enters into the Family of Nations retains the natural liberty of action due to it in consequence of its sovereignty, but at the same time takes over the obligation to exercise self-restraint and to restrict its liberty of action in the interest of that of other States. ”

“ But in the constitution of the government, as distinguished from the state, the nation is freer and more truly sovereign. The constitution of the state is that which gives to the people of a given territory political existence, unity, and individuality, and renders it capable of political action. It creates political or national solidarity, in imitation of the solidarity of the race, in which it has its root. It is the providential charter of national existence, and that which gives to each nation its peculiar character, and distinguishes it from every other nation. ”

“ Sovereignty, independence, and a perfect right of self-government, can signify nothing less than a superiority to and an exemption from all claims by any extraneous power, however expressly they may be asserted, and render all attempts to enforce such claims merely attempts at usurpation. ”

“ A state or nation has none such. But a thing does not have to be a person in order to be an individual. Not all individuals are personal. All individuals have inner unity. The nation has such unity, and it is this which the philosophers feel whose theory has just been described. They are the “unity philosophers.” And they feel a unity in a state which they seek to describe in terms of personality. We all feel the unity. For instance, we assume a continuity as existent in a country. Even a democratic country must through successive administrations employ the same policy abroad. ”

“ The modern nation is a history and a religion rather than a clear cut idea. Its power as an idea-force is not known till it is tried. How little the outsider, and even members of the community concerned, were able to gauge beforehand the strength of the sentiment and conception that pervaded the United States through the war of secession. [1] The place of the idea of the Nation-State in the whole of ethical ideas may be illustrated by the Greek conception of Happiness, as that organisation of aims, whatever it may be which permits the fullest harmony to life. ”

“ The crowning height of the process has been reached at the present time when the Great War has made nationalistic loyalty the ruling passion of mankind.
A state, then, is the outgrowth of the life of a people. The people is a growth, and the state is an institution which has grown along with the people. Therefore it would seem as if there were good indications for calling each of them real.
What makes a nation? The elements of a nation show both objective reality and inner unity. There are, roughly, three things which enter into the makeup of a country. ”

“ The nationalisation of States, which is the fundamental fact of modern history, affects both policy and strategy. If the State is a nation, the population associated as one body, then the force which it can use in case of conflict represents the sum of the energies of the whole population, and this force cannot and will not be used except as the expression of the will of the whole population. ”

“ Now the state or government comes at a certain stage of organization: small groups are drawn together; powerful corporations fall into line; a national feeling develops; eventually the state as we know it is formed. Sovereignty is a resultant of many forces. ”

“ The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted in its cause ”

“ To be sure, sovereignty can be lost—it can be lost by conquest, as in war; the extent or character of sovereignty can be changed, as in the acquisition or relinquishment of territory or the annexation of new peoples; sovereignty can be divided, when two States are created of one. But properly viewed, sovereignty is cause; sovereign powers, the effect: The wind that blows; the branches that move. Sovereignty is the essence, the life spirit, the soul: And in this Republic, sovereignty remains today where it was vested in 1776, in the people. But in the people as a whole? ”

“ Sovereignty, under God, inheres in the organic people, or the people as the republic; and every organic people fixed to the soil, and politically independent of every other people, is a sovereign people, and, in the modern sense, an independent sovereign nation. ”

“ The constitution drawn up, ordained, and established by a nation for itself is a law—the organic or fundamental law, if you will, but a law, and is and must be the act of the sovereign power. That sovereign power must exist before it can act, and it cannot exist, if vested in the people or nation, without a constitution, or without some sort of political organization of the people or nation. There must, then, be for every state or nation a constitution anterior to the constitution which the nation gives itself, and from which the one it gives itself derives all its vitality and legal force. ”

“ The states severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown, that, in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all of them functions of sovereign power. ”

“ By what means was the government, which was now, as all admitted, a mere federal league between sovereign States, to become, in any just sense, national? The idea of a nation implies the existence of a people united in their political rights, and possessed of the same political interests. ”

“ In the anti-Russia project, there is no place either for a sovereign Ukraine or for the political forces that are trying to defend its real independence. Those who talk about reconciliation in Ukrainian society, about dialogue, about finding a way out of the current impasse are labelled as “pro-Russian” agents. ”

“ Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished.
Today, the “right” patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. ”

“ The constant duel between the Nation and the States must cease. The National Unity must be assured,—in the only way which is practical and honest,—through the principles declared by our fathers and inwoven into the national life.
In one word, the Declaration of Independence must be recognized as a fundamental law, and State Rights, in all their denationalizing pretensions, must be trampled out forever, to the end that we may be, in reality as in name, a Nation.
Are we a Nation? Such is the question I now propose, believing that the whole case is involved in the [Pg 8] answer. Are we a Nation? ”

“ On one side we encounter a formidable Usurpation with all the pretensions of State Rights, hardly less flagrant and pernicious than those which ripened in bloody rebellion. On the other side are the simple and legitimate claims of the Union under the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ As in the Nation there can be but one sovereignty, so there can be but one citizenship. The unity of sovereignty finds its counterpart and complement in the unity of citizenship, and the two together are the tokens of a united people. Thus are the essential conditions of national life all resolved into three,—one sovereignty, one citizenship, one people.
I conclude as I began. The late Rebellion against the nation was in the name of State Rights ”

“ To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation; because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without morally committing any offensive secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression ”

“ And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us. As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions. ”

“ And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.
The incumbent authorities in Ukraine like to refer to Western experience, seeing it as a model to follow. Just have a look at how Austria and Germany, the USA and Canada live next to each other. Close in ethnic composition, culture, in fact sharing one language, they remain sovereign states with their own interests, with their own foreign policy. ”