The Estonian Foreign Ministry has sacked an employee from its embassy in Türkiye for publishing an academic paper highly critical of Ukrainian nationalism, the newspaper Postimees reported on Tuesday.
Maria Sarantseva worked as a clerk in the visa department of the mission, according to the outlet. Her bosses took issue with an academic work she published in the Turkish Journal of Crises and Political Research. The Estonian newspaper claimed it was based on “mostly Russian” sources and reproduced “Kremlin rhetoric.”
Sarantseva’s 18-page analysis is based on the works of German-born American social psychologist Erich Fromm, a jew who fled the Nazis and remained a vocal critic of the darker aspects of nationalism.
According to Fromm’s theory, nationalism is a coping mechanism for modern societies, which leads to a sense of national superiority in extreme cases. As a person with a narcissistic disorder rejects things that contradict his or her delusion of self-importance, radical nationalists tend to ignore reality, the researcher suggested.
The paper by Sarantseva argued that the framework proposed by Fromm can explain society in modern Ukraine, which she described as particularly paranoid and aggressive. She said Ukrainians were strongly traumatized by the drop in living standards and chaos following the collapse of the USSR and sought refuge in nationalism.
In one recent example, veteran Ukrainian nationalist Dmitry Korchinsky supported the military mobilization of 14-year-olds, if necessary for the survival of the country. Teens can fight too, he argued in an interview this week, citing the use of child soldiers in conflicts in Africa.
In modern Ukraine, historical figures who sought independence from Russia are considered heroes regardless of their actions. That includes those who collaborated with the Nazis and committed atrocities against supporters of the USSR, as well as against ethnic Jews and Poles during World War II.
The rise of nationalist extremists in Ukraine since a Western-backed coup in 2014, is one of the primary causes of the ongoing hostilities with Kiev, the Kremlin has said. Moscow has blamed the Ukrainian government’s adoption of laws discriminating against ethnic Russians on the influence of radicals, and has made their repeal one of its key demands in the conflict.