We all have great sympathy for the plight of Ukrainians now. But what position should we take? The press offers only one perspective: support militarily and financially the Ukrainians and celebrate their heroic resistance.
Some insight into the daily plight of the Ukrainians may be illuminated if I (Tom Roeper) resurrect my experience of the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968. I was trying to visit Prague — where I have relatives — but I do not speak Czech. The Russian invasion happened hours after my companion and I arrived and found a place in the outskirts of the city. The hotel owner woke us in the middle of the night and said “go to your American embassy, the Russians are here.” So we left on foot and saw a few men carrying guns saying they were going to defend the city against the Russians. I did not witness any other Czechs, then or later, nor through any official representatives, declare that they would defend the city.
The American embassy, which had been the home of the Petchecks who were (and are) friends of my family, had a big Russian tank stationed in front of it and would not let us in. A diplomat told us to go back to our hotel, which we could no longer do. It turned out later that they were not alarmed because the Russians had forewarned them in an effort to avoid World War III. So, in a sense, the Americans gave them permission to articulate their sphere of influence.
Once back on the streets we had no food, nowhere to stay, no way to get out, and no information about what was happening. We were adrift in a world of rumors. One rumor was that the borders were closed, which gave us no reason to travel to them. The train station was packed with no one going anywhere, like it is in Ukraine today. It was a scary situation for us as it is for the Ukrainians.
The main feature of my experience was darkness. All things were unknown and unstable. We eventually found a Youth Hostel with spare beds. The radio blared through loudspeakers in the walls, but Czechs said the radio station was the first thing the Russians took over.
To get our bearings and seek information, we walked to the Wencelas Platz in the city center where there were perhaps 20 Russian tanks, surrounded by people jeering. No conversations occurred because the soldiers were largely Muslims from the East and did not seem to speak Russian of Czech. One person in the crowd threw something on fire into an opening in a tank, and one of the Russians came out firing a machine gun. Everyone, including us, scattered into nearby storefronts. Some dozen people were hurt and ambulances came, but nothing more.
The outstanding fact is that the Czechs chose not to resist with violence, and did not engage in dangerous heroic acts of armed resistance. This saved many lives. Leaders shortly signed an agreement to change the government and 20 years later Chechia and Slovakia are independent countries.
The New York Times of March 7 reports that the Prime Minister of Moldova, directly bordering Russia, has asserted that they are “neutral.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he wants to “neutralize” Ukraine, and even Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken of “neutrality” as an option to be discussed. Austria was declared neutral after World War II by the post-war powers.
These perspectives occasionally merit a sentence or two of commentary but they are not presented as serious solutions by mainstream channels and periodicals. One should ask why our news media instead treats violent resistance as the only option in Ukraine. One incomplete but relevant answer notes the heavy corporate commitments of news media, both directly to their owners and indirectly to advertisers.
We are in no position to judge those on the ground. However, there is no reason to ignore the possibility that Ukraine can be neutral and that its people can be encouraged to respond to Russia’s criminal invasion nonviolently. The world now has many domains, like South Africa, that with time accomplished regime change, or imperfect settlements, without war. Spain has both Basque and Catalonia with new arrangements or seeking them.
In every domain of conflict it is critical that engaged outsiders, including other countries, formulate solutions to problems that protagonists may not initially be able to adopt without negotiations. Independent voices — countries, citizen groups — need to discuss detailed alternatives to stimulate real negotiations and achieve peace. It is simply absurd to assert that Russia has no reason to fear the U.S. or NATO close by their borders, when the U.S. has been involved in illegal aggression in so many parts of the world. We need, as President Joe Biden casually remarked recently in a press conference, to seek a peace in which “all sides security concerns are respected.”
Today, March 7, the Russians made a cease-fire offer with many conditions which the Ukrainians immediately rejected. Again, an opportunity to negotiate may not have really been carefully explored. We can see how U.S. public opinion, orchestrated by mass media, plays a role here: if citizens articulated a preference for federal spending to go toward humanitarian organizations aiding Ukrainians, rather than armament contracts, then perhaps this peace offer would have been a more attractive option.
This points to the need for nonprotagonists to think through a reasonable peace plan and seek international support for it.
Tom Roeper is a professor of linguistics and Amherst resident. Tyler Poisson lives in Northampton.