Russification and the Kosovo Precedent
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Move_Zig
on August 19, 2008 at 12:06 pm
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Two major factors underpinning the dynamics of the Georgian Crisis are Russification and the Kosovo Precedent A third major factor goes to the innate fear the Soviets have of invasion and thus their need for Buffer States.
To those unfamiliar with the history of the Soviet Union and the follow-on Commonwealth of Independent States, the argument given by the Russians that they are merely coming to the assistance of ethnic Russians in the breakaway provinces may sound convincing.
A closer examination of the situation reveals that the resurgent Soviets have long implemented a strategy of deporting the native peoples of a vassal state, suppressing all indicia of their national identity to include their language and religion, while importing large numbers of ethnic Russians. This practice has predated Communism in Russia and used under the Czar to Russify any given area. The dual purposes are to dilute the existing nation and cement it to Russia.
The second factor which counts heavily in the thought processes of Putin is the Kosovo precedent.
RUSSIFICATION
Here are some excerpts which cover a swath of time and the broad expanse of the states Russia had swallowed up in its wars of conquest.
Latvia
Deportations and an influx of Russians into Latvia during the Soviet period have resulted in a situation in which native Latvian speakers comprise only 59% of the population.
Lithuania
Lithuanians believe that Moscow wishes to extirpate both the Catholic religion and Lithuanian language and culture. The purpose would of course be forcibly to assimilate the tiny Lithuanian nation into the vast sea of Russians — a practice known is czarist days simply as “russification.”
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So long as the Lithuanians protest alone, of course, Moscow has more than enough force to repress their discontent. But there is every reason to suppose that there is similar nationalist passion in the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other non-Russian republics, not to mention the other two Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia.
Estonia
Estonia’s blossoming relations with Western Europe contrast with its strained relationship with Russia. In September 2000, Estonia angered Russia by instituting a full visa regime at the Estonian-Russian border, which it justified as necessary for its accession to the EU. At the same time, relations were marred by the expulsion of alleged Russian spies from Estonia and Russia’s reciprocal expulsion of alleged Estonian spies. In October 2002, Estonia stripped 1,000 residents, most Russian, of their Estonian citizenship, citing bureaucratic errors made just after independence in 1991. Less than a quarter of Estonia’s 400,000 ethnic Russians hold Estonian citizenship, as most did not qualify under the provision granting automatic citizenship to Russians born in Estonia during its 1918-40 period of independence; most arrived in Estonia after World War II.
Ukraine
Alarmed by the threat of Ukrainian separatism implied by a growing number of school textbooks teaching the Ukrainian language, the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Valuev in 1863 issued a secret decree that banned the publication of religious texts and educational texts written in the Ukrainian language [6]. This ban was expanded by Tsar Alexander II who issued the Ems Ukaz in 1876. All Ukrainian language books and song lyrics were banned, as was the importation of such works. Furthermore, Ukrainian-language public performances, plays, and lectures were forbidden.[7] In 1881, the decree was amended to allow the publishing of lyrics and dictionaries, and the performances opf some plays in the Ukrainian language with local officials’ approval. Ukrainian-only troupes were, however, forbidden.
While officially, there was no state language in the Soviet Union, Russian was in practice in a privileged position. The Ukrainian language was often frowned upon or quietly discouraged, which led to the gradual decline in its usage. Eventually, Russian remains more widely spoken than Ukrainian in many parts of Ukraine, notably most of the urban areas of the east and south.
Remnants of Empire: A special report.; Russians in Central Asia, Once Welcome, Now Flee
Vyacheslav and Tatyana Shapkin, Russians born in Kazakhstan, have had enough. The state collective farm where they live, 62 miles north of here, has not paid them in six months. They are selling everything they own.
They are doing what 300,000 other ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan did in 1994; they are moving back to a Russia they barely know.
The Shapkins are part of one of the largest migrations in the world since the end of the cold war—the quiet, humiliating flight of nearly three million Russians during the last three years from the former Soviet empire to a Russia that does not much want them, except as a focus for nationalist propaganda. Their departures strip struggling and newly independent countries like Kazakhstan of talent and of their multinational character.
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Problems are mounting high in northern Kazakhstan, where ethnic Russians predominate, making it one of the most important fault lines from the former Soviet Union. There is lots of tinder for those who want to start a fire, splitting Kazakhstan as part of a reordering of the post-Soviet world into a Slavic empire.
Russian nationalists from Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn to Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, who grew up in Almaty, regard the border between the two countries as both fake and temporary, and usually refer to this region as “southern Siberia.”
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Northern Kazakhstan is almost 80 percent ethnic Slav, a result of borders drawn by Russians to dilute the nomadic Kazakhs, who today make up only 40 percent of vast Kazakhstan’s population of 17 million. Huge numbers of Kazakhs starved during the Stalin-era collectivization of farmland, and many Russians, Tatars and ethnic Germans were deported here.
Then 40 years ago, Nikita S. Khrushchev announced the Virgin Lands campaign, intended to bring the enormous acreage of pastureland here under the plow. The next 10 years brought hundreds of thousands of young Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians to settle the steppes where Genghis Khan once roamed.
... (exclaimed one disgusted emigrant)
How could Russia declare sovereignty? Sovereignty from whom? From us Russians living outside? It was just a struggle for power between Yeltsin and Gorbachev and it led to the collapse of the whole country!
Kyrgyzstan
For its part, Russia sees aid to Kyrgyzstan as a successful precedent in its new policy of gaining influence in its “near abroad,” the states that once were Soviet republics. Russia does not want a massive in-migration of Russians from the new republics; some 2 million ethnic Russians moved back to Russia between 1992 and 1995, with at least that many again expected by the end of the century. Akayev, on the other hand, must find a way to stem the loss of his Russian population, which already has caused an enormous deficit of doctors, teachers, and engineers.
For these reasons, despite opposition from Kyrgyz nationalists and other independence-minded politicians, in 1995 Akayev granted the request of Russian president Boris N. Yeltsin to review the constitutional provision making Kyrgyz the sole official language. Early in 1996, Kyrgyzstan took legal steps toward making Russian the republic’s second official language, subject to amendment of the constitution. That initiative coincided with the customs union signed with Russia, Kazakstan, and Belarus in February 1996. The long-term success of Akayev’s search for reintegration is questionable because of Kyrgyzstan’s minimal strategic importance and the potential cost to an outside country supporting the republic’s shaky economy.
Kazakhstan
Russia is likely to begrudge China for wheeling and dealing in what it considers its backyard. However, with Russia’s ties to Kazakhstan gradually weakening, its only remaining tool to prevent China from making too many inroads is the FSB. The FSB could react against Kazakhstan’s economic promiscuity by conducting targeted assassinations. But this is not a strategy of first resort, as it risks attracting too much attention. Even without killing people, the FSB can exercise its power over political figures in Kazakhstan to prevent the country from drifting too far out of Russia’s orbit.
After all, one of Russia’s fundamental geopolitical imperatives is retaining Kazakhstan as a buffer state to its south. Of course, Kazakhstan serves the same purpose for China, which explains the tug-of-war going on between Moscow and Beijing over the resource-wealthy Central Asian nation. But at present, the tide seems to be in China’s favor.
As It Rises, Russia Stirs Baltic Fears
The signs of Russia’s resurgent influence are everywhere in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia: in Kremlin-financed media; in the financing of local politicians and economic development; in a growing assertiveness, encouraged by Moscow, among the third of the Baltic population that is of Russian heritage; in the Kremlin’s manipulation of its energy supplies as a bludgeon.KOSOVO PRECEDENT
These tactics — especially the use of Russian cash — have evoked stress in the Baltics that was unthinkable even five years ago.
“What we are afraid of is the very huge money that comes from Russia that can be used to corrupt our officials,” General Kronkaitis said in an interview. “And I’m talking about very large money. Money can then be used to control our government. Then Lithuania, in a very subtle way, over many years perhaps, becomes dominated and loses its independence.”
“Over many years” may be an understatement, Baltic nationalists say. In 2004, Lithuania’s president was impeached for alleged connections to Russia’s secret service and big business.
It all seems part of a strategy by President Vladimir Putin to revive Russian power in much of Eastern Europe.
For the Balts, any move that angers Russia runs huge risks. Last month, for example, the Estonian state prosecutor charged four ethnic Russians with organizing riots in April to protest the government’s move of a statue of a Soviet soldier from the capital to a suburb as the anniversary of victory in World War II neared. The Russian-language press had egged on the protesters.
“There is reason to believe that financial support and advice to organize mass disorders was also received from the Russian Federation,” the prosecutor said. After the riots, hackers briefly paralyzed Estonia’s government and banks, and Estonia said the cyberattacks were traced to Kremlin addresses.
The tensions over the riots come as the Baltic countries are trying to challenge Russia’s energy monopoly.
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after the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact in 1939, Soviet troops swept in and Stalin deported hundreds of thousands of Balts to die in Siberian gulags.
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After the war came an influx of Russian workers whose presence would, in time, be cited by the Soviets to claim that these states should never again get independence. For its part, the Putin government has campaigned for ethnic Russians to insist on attaining a stronger voice by accepting Baltic citizenship.
In NEWSWEEK
During the breakup of the Soviet Union, indigenous groups in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought separatist wars in which they received barely veiled help from the Soviet military. These territories have since enjoyed de facto independence, though they aren’t formally recognized by any state, including Russia. Moscow has granted Russian citizenship to most of their people, while Russian “peacekeepers” continue to “separate” local forces from their Georgian antagonists. This uneasy truce has prevailed since 1993, broken by periodic violent flare-ups.
But on Sept. 9, when Vladimir Putin invited a group of Western experts to dinner, including me, he issued a stern warning. If the West recognizes Kosovo’s independence, Russia may do the same for the former Georgian republics. “It is inadmissible to apply one rule to Kosovo and another to Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” he told us. “Such a policy cannot be ethical and has no future.”
and here
Again as in the case of Kosovo, the politics of double standards will come out in the United Nations. Countries that have recognized the independence of Kosovo are now looking for an argument that Kosovo is a “special case”, which is a complete nonsense. When one goes into the violation of the international law and disregard of the sovereignty of states, as it was done in the case of Kosovo, they can expect the possibility that such a recipe will be applied in all other situations
Angry Vertebrate
goon
Chimerical Id
The Whistler
RebTex
robert108