Why is Ukraine's economic separation from Russia considered artificial?

2 months ago

Here is a link to a Policy Paper on Ukraine of the US State Department from 1948, archived at the Foreign Affairs website. Fascinating reading, how times have changed.

A couple of excerpts:

There is no clear dividing line between Russia and the Ukraine. and it would be impossible to establish one. The cities in Ukrainian territory have been predominantly Russian and Jewish. The real basis of “Ukrainianism” is the feeling of “difference” produced by a specific peasant dialect and by minor differences of custom and folklore throughout the country districts. The political agitation on the surface is largely the work of a few romantic intellectuals, who have little concept of the responsibilities of government.

…The economy of Ukraine is inextricably intertwined with that of Russia as a whole. There has never been any economic separation since the territory was conquered, from the nomadic Tatars and developed for purposes of a sedentary population. To attempt to carve it out of the Russian economy and set it up as something separate would be as artificial and destructive as an attempt to separate the Corn Belt, including the Great Lakes industrial area, from the economy of the United States…

…the people who speak the Ukrainian dialect have been split, like those who speak the White Russian dialect, by a division which in eastern Europe has always been the real mark of nationality: namely, religion. If any real border can be drawn in the Ukraine, it should logically be the border between the areas which traditionally give religious allegiance to the Eastern Church and those who give it to the Church of Rome…

The US foreign policy community, especially the State Department has degenerated since those days.