The Tragedy of Ukraine: From Crisis (κρίσις) to ‘Forgetting Evil’ (μεμνήσι κακείν)

Reconciliation requires a system of justice based on compassion rather than vengeance

Sophocles’ Antigone at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus theater in Athens, April 22, 1937.

Fabio Calzolari, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand recently interviewed Nicolai N. Petro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island. Petro’s most recent book, The Tragedy of Ukraine (De Gruyter, 2022), demonstrated how classical Greek tragedy offers a conceptual framework for healing divided societies, revealing the emotional dynamics that precede violence and inhibit reconciliation. Petro’s earlier books, such as Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society (Westview, 1990), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy (Harvard, 1995), Crafting Democracy (Cornell, 2004) outline how the engagement of civic actors can bring about dispute resolution even when official state structures are contested. – The Editors

FABIO CALZOLARI: Professor Petro, your research connects diplomatic history, church–state institutions, Ukrainian regional governance, and analysis of Greek tragedy. How did fieldwork and archival research in Eastern Europe lead you to analyze political clashes as processes driven by institutional misalignment within a divided polity?

NICOLAI PETRO: Let me begin with a brief philosophical introduction. I feel that political institutions need to be understood within the context of their own political cultures. This is where political science training fails us because, as a project of modernity, it seeks to establish universal norms rather than culturally specific ones. This can lead to serious distortions when Western analysts look at non-Western political systems.

Critics sometimes refer to these distortions as “double-standards”, pointing to behavior that is deemed acceptable for Western countries, but not for other countries. The problem, however, is more deeply rooted: In its dealing with non-Western nations the West regards itself as acting in the name of human progress, and therefore as above reproach.

Such blindness to the value inherent in other cultures can lead to serious analytical errors when evaluating the prospects for economic, political, and military success of countries deemed non-Western. We see this manifested in Russia’s unforeseen resilience to Western sanctions, its growing popularity throughout the Global South, and the rise of the BRICS nations more broadly.

I first noticed this cultural blindness when I came to study in the US from Italy. My university courses on the Soviet Union were largely devoid of cultural, religious, and for the most part, even historical context. I knew of this context from growing up in the Russian emigration in Europe, and it led me to very different conclusions, which I discussed in my book The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture.

After my doctorate I began to travel often to Russia, then to Ukraine. I continued to pay careful attention to cultural context, especially how it differed from region to region. These differences suggested to me that the same problem that we were seeing on the international level among states, were also being replicated between regions and their central government. Respect for local history and culture would therefore likely be just as important to domestic social stability as it is to international stability.

My family and I arrived in Ukraine just as the 2013-2014 Maidan revolt was unfolding. We lived in Odessa, a Russian-speaking city where most people viewed the Maidan as a coup d’etat rather than a popular uprising. In my latest book, The Tragedy of Ukraine, I describe how cultural difference caused the political divisions we see today, and suggest that classical Greek tragedy can provide a healing social therapy.

FABIO CALZOLARI: In The Tragedy of Ukraine, you show how societies fall into tragic cycles when dialogue between differently situated people and institutions loses legitimacy, and public humiliation becomes a routine signaling device. Which measurable indicators would you monitor in a divided polity to identify at an early stage the threat of this kind of internal conflict? Should conflict analysis formally incorporate discursive data–public media pronouncements of various sorts–as predictive variables?

NICOLAI PETRO: There is a problem with using discursive data for political prediction. It is the same problem that exists in common law—namely, that speech is not always translated into direct action. An angry parent might say to a child, “I’ll kill you if you don’t clean your room this instant!” But they rarely do.

Despite not always being a reliable indicator of behavior, however, public discourse can provide some important clues regarding the likely behavior of elites, particularly when it is structured and promoted by governments. We see this structure in the rhetoric of public officials, and in the narratives of prominent media organizations.

Despite the seeming variety of such discourse, it is actually not that difficult to summarize and evaluate because the significance of what public officials say can be weighted to their position in government, and the significance of social media outlets can be weighted to their audience reach. Thus, we can get a pretty good sense of the most important discursive patterns from looking at the top five media sources in any community, since they are later replicated throughout all of society.

Finally, one should corroborate these findings with survey data, though I would not rely on surveys as my primary indicator. There are several reasons for this. First, people often hide their views on sensitive subjects (e.g., “would you approve if your daughter married a …?” ). Second, attitudes change over time, so one needs a long sequence of comparable data, especially on sensitive issues. Finally, before, during, and after major conflicts, attitudes become seriously distorted, thanks to social media and government manipulation.

FABIO CALZOLARI: In The Tragedy of Ukraine, you demonstrate that estrangement between Western and Eastern regions (oblasts) did not originate in cultural difference but in the administrative treatment of language as a security variable. If linguistic practice and civic loyalty were stable at the local level until state policy re-built them, which post-1991 governance structure would have prevented that phenomenon? Would constitutional regional autonomy in education, or municipal authority over cultural regulation, have stabilized Ukrainian society without generating cleavages?

NICOLAI PETRO: Constitutionally enshrined regional autonomy was actually tried in Crimea from 1991 to 1995. Had the Crimean model been applied more widely in Ukraine, perhaps there would have been greater momentum for a transition to a federal system of government. This was the form of government supported by the leader of the People’s Movement of Ukraine, or Rukh, Viacheslav Chornovil, who died in a car accident in 1999.

During the current war, in addition to language usage, independent media, regional political parties, and religious identity have all been securitized. This has exacerbated the conflict between Galicia and Donbass (the heartlands of Western and Eastern Ukraine), and made the Ukrainian government into one of the primary architects of the divisions in Ukrainian society.

FABIO CALZOLARI: Critics might say that your tragic framework assumes minimal reciprocity for dialogue to regain legitimacy. How does your tragic model perform when one of the sides feels that its trauma is greater than the other’s, and when, furthermore, that trauma is given institutional recognition by only one of the sides, resulting in unequal ‘epistemic’ authority?

NICOLAI PETRO: Trauma is too intensely personal to be independently adjudicated. Although some Truth and Reconciliation Commissions set themselves the goal of gauging trauma, assigning responsibility, and seeking compensation for it (Guatemala and South Africa come to mind), these efforts have typically been seen as unsatisfactory.

Emphasizing forgiveness and forgetfulness, so that personal trauma does not impede reconciliation, has proved more fruitful. As opposed to imposing institutional justice, forgiveness is a path that any individual can embrace, if they are willing to live alongside their former enemies after the war, and work together to create a better society for their children.

This was the path chosen by Spain after Francisco Franco died. Known as the Pacto de Olvido, or Pact of Forgetting. Political parties in post-Franco Spain agreed to suppress movements seeking revenge (and separation from Spain). This has allowed future generations to revisit the trauma of the Spanish Civil War from a more distant perspective, and to view it in a far less vengeful and socially disruptive light. Such pacts can be traced at least as far back as 404 B.C., when Thrasybulus decreed that, in the interests of social concord, there be no vendetta taken by Athenian democracy against the oligarchs.

FABIO CALZOLARI: You treat nationalism as a closure mechanism that limits reciprocal acknowledgement even inside democratic institutions. How does moral sincerity become an informal exclusion tool without explicit legal restriction, for example, through public-resource allocation or curriculum standardization? What criteria distinguish civic patriotism from identity absolutism when stereotyping is not formally or legally evident?

NICOLAI PETRO: Again, I would make an analogy to the law. Discrimination is very hard to prove in court. That is because the person accused of discrimination, say on the basis of race, can argue that he was not discriminating on the basis of race, but on the basis of economic status, which is not illegal. Intent is therefore critical.

I distinguish between nationalism and patriotism, following the arguments of noted scholars like Maurizio Viroli, Mary Dietz, and John Schaar. The principle distinction between the two is very clear. Patriotism and nationalism both appeal to identity and values, but whereas nationalism excludes “who can belong to the nation” by equating civic identity with ethnicity and culture, patriotism includes “who can belong to the nation” by separating civic identity from ethnicity and culture.

Nationalism places the unity of the people, as manifested in their ideological attachment to blood and soil, above all other values; whereas patriotism places the individual liberty, enshrined in their equality before the law, above the unity that nationalist governments strive to manufacture.

The proper question then becomes: what criteria would distinguish a nationalistic from a patriotic history or literature curriculum? One way to answer this question is to refer to the de-Nazification of the school curricula in postwar German, Italy, and Japan (as well as Hungary, Croatia, Romania and other countries) to see what was done in practice.

FABIO CALZOLARI: In the Oresteia, the chorus is an internal audience that validates proper behavior and signals when both sides must be heard. Within current EU debates over the use of frozen Russian assets to finance the war in Ukraine, which European civil intermediaries still perform an Oresteian choral function? Which intermediaries have forfeited this listening capacity?

NICOLAI PETRO: The infamous “democracy deficit” that has plagued the EU since its inception has become more evident over the course of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. I am referring to the lack of checks and balances in the administrative process, and the lack of any electoral accountability. There is not a single body in the EU that is elected by all Europeans.

As a result, The European Commission has created a parallel structure of government that increasingly conflicts with the governments of member states. In theory, the European Parliament has the ability to force the resignation of the Commission, but this has never happened. The Parliament could still serve as a forum for meaningful debate, but in order to do that, it would need to have the ability to influence policy. But since it does not have that ability, it is an empty sounding board. As a result, instead of encouraging dialogue, EU leaders impose uniformity of opinion through executive decisions and the Digital Services Act.

Dissenters feel they are not heard within the EU, so instead of participating in such fora, they set up their own, distinct fora. This only promotes social divisions, and further EU repressions.

FABIO CALZOLARI: The Eumenides creates the Areopagus not as legal machinery but as a ritual-political body that establishes epistemic parity, thereby extinguishing the cycle of retribution. For a postwar Ukraine, which institutional body could be endowed with similar Areopagus-type mixed legitimacy (professional expertise + civic guardianship + ritual recognition)?

NICOLAI PETRO: I have long argued that Ukraine needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that could serve as a vehicle for social healing, and begin the process of knitting together the estranged components of Ukrainian society.

For this to happen, however, all sides in the current conflict need a public forum where they feel safe. After the war, there will be a great need to give voice to the anguish and grievances of all sides, to bestow recognition on the once-enemy Other, and to exorcize resentments that will otherwise metastasize into a never-ending cycle of hatred. To bring lasting peace after the war, Ukraine will need an instrument for nationwide catharsis.

While this would not resolve individual grievances, it would give them a public voice, which is a necessary first step toward having the aggrieved feel that they can become stakeholders in the political future of Ukraine.

FABIO CALZOLARI: In the Eumenides, Athena resolves the conflict between Orestes and the Erinyes not by declaring one side ethically correct, but by allowing a split verdict in the Areopagus, so that neither party receives total vindication; subsequent legitimacy stems from institutional balance. For Ukrainian reconciliation, could a non-victorious constitutional settlement serve as the tragic analogue to Athena’s solution? Can political science treat narrative humility as a constitutional principle so that it becomes an enforceable rule of coexistence?

NICOLAI PETRO: In Aeschylus’ telling, the jury verdict condemns Orestes for murdering his mother, but by intervening to cast a vote herself, Athena induces a tie. This overturns this result and leads to Orestes’ acquittal.

I see Athena’s intervention as an attempt by Aeschylus to start a new Athenian political tradition. Replacing tradition requires some new source of political legitimacy, in this case it is divine justice. But it is a different aspect of justice than before the trial, namely one based on compassion rather than vengeance. Athena makes explicit reference to her preference for “moderation,” and that moderation should always be the outcome sought.

As for the second part of your question, the key issue is not who could play the role of Orestes in Ukraine, but -- who would play the role of Athena? Who would have the power to lead the conflicting parties in Ukrainian society to compassion?

FABIO CALZOLARI: In The Predicament of Human Rights (1983), you argue that ethical posturing without institutional de jure and de facto implementation weakens diplomacy by generating expectations that institutions either cannot fulfill or are unwilling to fulfill. In current Western practice, unilateral sanctions regimes are frequently justified as rights-based responses to Russian aggression. Yet they often impose extraterritorial constraints on third parties who were not parties to the original dispute, therefore going against the principles they are supposed to protect. Does this asymmetry risk creating a precedent which will allow other states to treat international law and principles as selectively binding?

NICOLAI PETRO: Is this not exactly what we see happening?

Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island and Senior Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author or editor of twelve books. During the collapse of the Soviet Union he served as special assistant for policy in the US State Department. His website is www.npetro.net.