Paul Goble
Vienna, August 24 – Moscow should move quickly to create its own “Russian Texas,” an area that would be “more Russian than the capital” in order to block the rising tide of separatist sentiment in ethnic Russian regions and to make the Russian Federation more truly Russian, according to a leading Russian nationalist writer.
In an essay posted online yesterday, Yegor Kholmogorov argues that Moscow should be far more worried about separatist projects in ethnic Russian regions than about similar efforts in non-Russian regions to which the central authorities have devoted more attention (http://rus-proekt.ru/people/884.print).
“With the exception of the North Caucasus,” he writes, “the basic mass of autonomous semi-separatist formations are located within Russian territory and by definition are not capable of being sustained.” Indeed, he continues, any separatism of these regions would be thinkable only “in the context of the total collapse of Russia.”
But the situation with regard to ethnic Russian regions is “entirely different.” Not only are they wealthier and now have borders with foreign states, but also attitudes among many in these places are being driven by what Kholmogorov calls “the anti-Russian, xenophilic regional policy of the center.”
And the result, the country now is confronted by a situation that is “not only real but in fact extraordinarily dangerous.”
Even after President Vladimir Putin’s effort to restore “a power vertical” between Moscow and the rest of the country, Kholmogorov says, what autonomy exists in most cases represents a kind of “prize for non-Russianness.” And that is just the reverse of what he says the situation should be for a truly Russian Russia.
Autonomy must not as now be a prize for non-Russians but rather one for Russians who should have significantly more powers and rights than the latter both because Russia is first and foremost “their” country and because some of them may decide to try to leave unless Moscow changes course.
Consequently, Kholmogorov continues, “As never before, contemporary Russia needs its own ‘Russian Texas’ and its own ‘Middle West,’ that is, regions which are ‘more holy than the pope’ and are more Russian than the capital” in order to ensure that the traditional values of “Russianness” will not only flourish but define the nation’s life.
To achieve these ends, however, Moscow will have to do more than simply shift the balance between Russian and non-Russian regions. It will have to create new and completely Russian-dominated regions, where Russianness “will be preserved untouched to the maximum extent possible and even to a certain extent artificially cultivated.
And it will have to dispatch Russian “commissars” and impose special taxes and restrictions on non-Russian areas to ensure that people living in them will recognize the values of assimilating as rapidly as possible to the Russian nation that is after all the core of the Russian Federation.
Virtually all non-Russians are certain to be horrified by Kholmogorov’s ideas, and many Russians as well, either from pragmatic considerations – adopting his program could trigger more non-Russian nationalism – or ideological ones – Kholmogorov’s traditionalist regions would threaten any chance for democratization and modernization.
And because that is the case, the real significance of his article is less in the arguments he makes for change in the Russian political order than in the fears of Russian regionalism and separatism that inform Kholmogorov’s article and beyond any doubt the thinking of many Russians not only in Moscow but in the regions as well.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Ukraine’s Ethnic Russians Overwhelmingly Loyal to Kyiv, Moscow Analyst Says
Paul Goble
Vienna, August 24 – Ethnic Russians in Ukraine are overwhelmingly loyal to Kyiv, a reflection of both their experiences at the end of the Soviet period and the strides the Ukrainian government has made to create a political rather than ethnic nation in that country, according to a leading Moscow specialist on ethnic issues.
Consequently, Sergei Markedonov argues in an article posted online this week, Moscow’s continuing efforts to exploit what many Russian officials and still believe is a significant dividing line within Ukraine are doomed to fail and may even backfire (http://www.russ.ru/layout/set/print//politics/docs/ukraina_raskola_ne_predviditsya).
On the one hand, Markedonov’s conclusions resemble those of Kremlin aide Modest Kolerov who in June 2006 urged that Moscow recognize that “there are no pro-Russian forces in the post-Soviet space” and that those who present themselves as such are marginal figures who lack any support in the countries where they now live.
But on the other, the Moscow analyst’s remarks this week are a significant extension of those ideas because they directly address the situation in Ukraine, a country that, in Markedonov’s words, has always occupied “a special role” in Russian thinking and “Soviet nostalgia.”
The creation of Ukraine in its current borders, Markedonov reminds his readers, was the work of Joseph Stalin who added the six western oblasts to the Ukrainian SSR at the end of World War II and Nikita Khrushchev who transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.
As a result, Ukraine even in Soviet times had an ethnically diverse population, and Ukraine itself represented “an imagined community,” one in which ethnic Ukrainians for nationalist reasons and ethnic Russians there as the result of their specific life experiences with Russians from the RSFSR found a great deal of common ground.
Ukrainian nationalist sympathies in the late Soviet period are well-known, but Markedonov offers an interesting detail: Vitaliy Shelest’, the son of Ukrainian party boss Pyotr Shelest, repeatedly read and accepted most of the arguments of Ivan Dzyuba’s classic “Internationalism or Russification.”
But what the Moscow analyst says about ethnic Russians in the Ukrainian SSR is even more important. Markedonov, a native of Rostov, said that in the 1970s and 1980s, ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine were horrified by and viewed themselves as very different than the RSFSR Russians who traveled there to buy food.
And those experiences rather than some misplaced optimism about the future explain why ethnic Russians in the eastern portions of Ukraine voted for the independence of that country from the Soviet Union almost as enthusiastically as ethnic Ukrainians did.
Such attitudes, however, might not have mattered much if the post-Soviet Ukrainian leadership had sought an émigré-based ethnic national state, as some Ukrainians hoped. But instead, Kyiv has actively promoted the creation of “a political Ukrainian nation,” one with a place for ethnic Russians as well as ethnic Ukrainians.
This process, Markedonov continues, is “far from its completion,” but he argues that Moscow must recognize and base its policies toward Kyiv on the reality that over the last 16 years, “the Kyiv elite has been able to do a great deal to overcome the ethno-cultural split of the country.”
By acting in this way, the Moscow analyst says, Ukrainian leaders have been able to prevent their country from falling into the difficulties in which Georgia or even Moldova have found themselves and “what is most important” have been able to “create the traditions of a civilized transfer of power and the achievement of compromises.”
Since 1991, Ukraine has had three presidents. It has had even more prime ministers. And it has a political system in which compromise has been enshrined as a political virtue, something not found in many other post-Soviet states, including the Russian Federation.
As a result, Markedonov concludes, “the state in Ukraine exists, and a single political nation has become to be formed.” And the sooner that people in Moscow understand this, the batter” instead of continuing to pursue policies based on assumptions that are no longer true if they ever were.
Vienna, August 24 – Ethnic Russians in Ukraine are overwhelmingly loyal to Kyiv, a reflection of both their experiences at the end of the Soviet period and the strides the Ukrainian government has made to create a political rather than ethnic nation in that country, according to a leading Moscow specialist on ethnic issues.
Consequently, Sergei Markedonov argues in an article posted online this week, Moscow’s continuing efforts to exploit what many Russian officials and still believe is a significant dividing line within Ukraine are doomed to fail and may even backfire (http://www.russ.ru/layout/set/print//politics/docs/ukraina_raskola_ne_predviditsya).
On the one hand, Markedonov’s conclusions resemble those of Kremlin aide Modest Kolerov who in June 2006 urged that Moscow recognize that “there are no pro-Russian forces in the post-Soviet space” and that those who present themselves as such are marginal figures who lack any support in the countries where they now live.
But on the other, the Moscow analyst’s remarks this week are a significant extension of those ideas because they directly address the situation in Ukraine, a country that, in Markedonov’s words, has always occupied “a special role” in Russian thinking and “Soviet nostalgia.”
The creation of Ukraine in its current borders, Markedonov reminds his readers, was the work of Joseph Stalin who added the six western oblasts to the Ukrainian SSR at the end of World War II and Nikita Khrushchev who transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.
As a result, Ukraine even in Soviet times had an ethnically diverse population, and Ukraine itself represented “an imagined community,” one in which ethnic Ukrainians for nationalist reasons and ethnic Russians there as the result of their specific life experiences with Russians from the RSFSR found a great deal of common ground.
Ukrainian nationalist sympathies in the late Soviet period are well-known, but Markedonov offers an interesting detail: Vitaliy Shelest’, the son of Ukrainian party boss Pyotr Shelest, repeatedly read and accepted most of the arguments of Ivan Dzyuba’s classic “Internationalism or Russification.”
But what the Moscow analyst says about ethnic Russians in the Ukrainian SSR is even more important. Markedonov, a native of Rostov, said that in the 1970s and 1980s, ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine were horrified by and viewed themselves as very different than the RSFSR Russians who traveled there to buy food.
And those experiences rather than some misplaced optimism about the future explain why ethnic Russians in the eastern portions of Ukraine voted for the independence of that country from the Soviet Union almost as enthusiastically as ethnic Ukrainians did.
Such attitudes, however, might not have mattered much if the post-Soviet Ukrainian leadership had sought an émigré-based ethnic national state, as some Ukrainians hoped. But instead, Kyiv has actively promoted the creation of “a political Ukrainian nation,” one with a place for ethnic Russians as well as ethnic Ukrainians.
This process, Markedonov continues, is “far from its completion,” but he argues that Moscow must recognize and base its policies toward Kyiv on the reality that over the last 16 years, “the Kyiv elite has been able to do a great deal to overcome the ethno-cultural split of the country.”
By acting in this way, the Moscow analyst says, Ukrainian leaders have been able to prevent their country from falling into the difficulties in which Georgia or even Moldova have found themselves and “what is most important” have been able to “create the traditions of a civilized transfer of power and the achievement of compromises.”
Since 1991, Ukraine has had three presidents. It has had even more prime ministers. And it has a political system in which compromise has been enshrined as a political virtue, something not found in many other post-Soviet states, including the Russian Federation.
As a result, Markedonov concludes, “the state in Ukraine exists, and a single political nation has become to be formed.” And the sooner that people in Moscow understand this, the batter” instead of continuing to pursue policies based on assumptions that are no longer true if they ever were.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
