GHOSTS AND SHADOWS
Putin History and The Ukraine
'A state whose policymakers nurse grudges against both its enemies and its friends is a dangerous animal, ready to pounce at the first fright or whiff of opportunity. Russia [in 1914] was a country with much to loose, but for which the risks of inaction seemed...to be as great and possibly greater, than those of action. It was a country in other words that would not shrink from going to war to improve her precarious position in a hostile international environment.'
From 'The Russian Origins of the First World War,' Sean McMeekin.
‘The president of ex-Soviet Moldova has warned Russia against any attempt to annex his country’s separatist Transdniestria region in the same way that it has taken control of Crimea in Ukraine.
During a trip to Moscow, the speaker of Transdniestria’s separatist parliament, Mikhail Burla, yesterday urged Russia to incorporate his mainly Russian-speaking region, which split away from Moldova in 1990…President Nicolae Timofti said today that Russia would be making a “mistake” if it agreed to the request:
"This is an illegal body which has taken no decision on inclusion into Russia. I believe that Burla’s actions are counter-productive and will do no good for either Moldova or Russia. And if Russia makes a move to satisfy such proposals, it will be making a mistake."
The separatist region fought a brief war with Moldova in 1992 and it declared itself an independent state, but it remains unrecognised by any country, including Russia, which has 1,500 troops stationed there.
A referendum in Transdniestria in 2006 produced a 97.2% vote in favour of joining Russia, an even higher score than in Crimea’s referendum. Unlike Crimea, however, it is located far from Russia. It shares a border with Ukraine.
Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has been governed by pro-Western leaders since 2009. It has clinched an association agreement with the European Union, as currently sought by the pro-western leaders who came to power in Ukraine after the removal of Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/ukraine-crisis-putin-plan-crimea-annex-speech-russia-live
During a trip to Moscow, the speaker of Transdniestria’s separatist parliament, Mikhail Burla, yesterday urged Russia to incorporate his mainly Russian-speaking region, which split away from Moldova in 1990…President Nicolae Timofti said today that Russia would be making a “mistake” if it agreed to the request:
"This is an illegal body which has taken no decision on inclusion into Russia. I believe that Burla’s actions are counter-productive and will do no good for either Moldova or Russia. And if Russia makes a move to satisfy such proposals, it will be making a mistake."
The separatist region fought a brief war with Moldova in 1992 and it declared itself an independent state, but it remains unrecognised by any country, including Russia, which has 1,500 troops stationed there.
A referendum in Transdniestria in 2006 produced a 97.2% vote in favour of joining Russia, an even higher score than in Crimea’s referendum. Unlike Crimea, however, it is located far from Russia. It shares a border with Ukraine.
Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, has been governed by pro-Western leaders since 2009. It has clinched an association agreement with the European Union, as currently sought by the pro-western leaders who came to power in Ukraine after the removal of Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/ukraine-crisis-putin-plan-crimea-annex-speech-russia-live
Comparisons with Hitler are rarely helpful and even more rarely accurate, so before I continue let me say that I do not believe Vladimir Putin to be another Hitler. Putin is an extraordinarily unpleasant man, he is a gangster- and this is intended as a literal description and not hyperbole – but Hitler he is not. Yet in writing about the current crises between Russia and the Ukraine the analogy with the European instability generated by Hitler after 1933 constantly intrudes.
The analogy being made most often, indeed was made as recently as yesterday morning on the radio by the eminent Conservative back-bencher Sir Malcolm Rifkind, is with the Sudeten crises of 1938. Hitler expressed himself driven to apoplexy by the treatment of the German community in the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia,[1] whilst the German community in the Sudetenland began to agitate for incorporation in the Reich. The parallels with the situation in Crimea are obvious. I my self recently used the analogy of Danzig, whilst others have chosen the Austrian Anschluss. Though one can go back further, and indeed listening to Putin’s imperial speech yesterday you were listening to the Tsar of all the Russia’s.
The analogy being made most often, indeed was made as recently as yesterday morning on the radio by the eminent Conservative back-bencher Sir Malcolm Rifkind, is with the Sudeten crises of 1938. Hitler expressed himself driven to apoplexy by the treatment of the German community in the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia,[1] whilst the German community in the Sudetenland began to agitate for incorporation in the Reich. The parallels with the situation in Crimea are obvious. I my self recently used the analogy of Danzig, whilst others have chosen the Austrian Anschluss. Though one can go back further, and indeed listening to Putin’s imperial speech yesterday you were listening to the Tsar of all the Russia’s.
 |
| Putin signs the paperwork annexing Crimea |
I am currently reading ‘The Russian Origins of the First World War,' by Sean McMeekin and am struck by the similarity in tone between those articulating Russia’s imperial project in 1914 and Putin’s Pan Slavic grievance laden speech yesterday.
The ghosts and shadows of history are everywhere but particularly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In 1914 the major prize for Russia was Galicia, inhabited, or so the Tsarist policy makers imagined, with the Slav little brothers yearning for union with the motherland and to be freed from the Austro-Hungarian yoke.[2] Galicia was indeed eventually incorporated into modern day Ukraine and represents the most pro-European region in Ukraine.
It is worth stating that when Putin speaks of the eternal unity between Russians and Ukrainians he is articulating a very real popular sentiment felt by a great many Russian people and a sizable proportion of the Ukrainian.[3] The history of Russia is the history of a combination of policies based upon insecurity, the lack of clear and easily defended frontiers, Pan Slavism and Greater Russian chauvinism, the latter articulated even by Stalin, who was a Georgian. Putin’s worldview and sense of grievance is firmly rooted in Russian history.
The big question now, as when considering Hitler’s moves after Munich, is where next? The obvious move would be against, what we must now call, Ukraine proper. I think this unlikely, though much depends on how much control Moscow has over the Russian ‘tourists’ travelling to Eastern Ukrainian cities like Donetsk. Notwithstanding a sudden flare up in the regions bordering Russia I think it more likely that Putin pauses for a short period whilst he absorbs the fall out from his annexation of Crimea and consolidates his hold over the Russian media, eliminating any remaining independent voices. He is then more likely to seek to put pressure on Belarus and Moldova to ‘integrate’ more closely with the Russian Federation. Whatever moves he makes we are now in a very uncertain and different age from that which emerged from the
collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time Russia faced the choice of either moving in a more open and democratic direction, a move admittedly made much more difficult by the introduction of Western style rapacious capitalism, or fall back in upon itself and its history, drawing on its long experience of isolation and exceptionalism. Putin has now clearly embraced the latter.
What happens next will fill chapter after chapter of future history books. I doubt that it will be good. As Timothy Garton Ash says ‘…with rhetoric more reminiscent of 1914 than 2014, Putin's Russia is now a revanchist power in plain view.’[4]
As to forecasting the future course of events history may haunt us but it rarely provides clear and coherent lessons.
[1] Needless to say this ‘persecution’ existing only in Hitler’s head., though it is true that the German minority in Czechoslovakia though had been a privileged elite under the Hapsburgs, now they found themselves merely ordinary citizens on an equal footing with other citizens, though of course to the Nazi mentality this did constitute persecution. They had incidentally, unlike the German community of Danzig, never been citizens of the German state.
[2] As McMeekin describes the invading armies were soon to be disabused; imagining Ukrainian to be just another dialect they were astonished to find that they could not understand what their fellow Slavs were saying, whilst they were met with outright hostility by the Poles and, understandably give Russia’s record, the Jews. McMeekin record that ‘…between 500,000 and 1 million Jews were expelled from their homes under Russian military administration between 1914 and 1917, along with 250,000 Germans.’ See The Russian Origins of The First World War, Belknap Harvard 2011, p94-95.
[3] Though Ukrainians seeing Russians as their Slav brothers does not necessarily equate with wishing to see Ukraine swallowed up by Russia again. Only in Galicia, which in the last 100yrs has experienced both Austro-Hungarian and Polish rule, is this feeling of unity negligible.
The ghosts and shadows of history are everywhere but particularly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In 1914 the major prize for Russia was Galicia, inhabited, or so the Tsarist policy makers imagined, with the Slav little brothers yearning for union with the motherland and to be freed from the Austro-Hungarian yoke.[2] Galicia was indeed eventually incorporated into modern day Ukraine and represents the most pro-European region in Ukraine.
It is worth stating that when Putin speaks of the eternal unity between Russians and Ukrainians he is articulating a very real popular sentiment felt by a great many Russian people and a sizable proportion of the Ukrainian.[3] The history of Russia is the history of a combination of policies based upon insecurity, the lack of clear and easily defended frontiers, Pan Slavism and Greater Russian chauvinism, the latter articulated even by Stalin, who was a Georgian. Putin’s worldview and sense of grievance is firmly rooted in Russian history.
The big question now, as when considering Hitler’s moves after Munich, is where next? The obvious move would be against, what we must now call, Ukraine proper. I think this unlikely, though much depends on how much control Moscow has over the Russian ‘tourists’ travelling to Eastern Ukrainian cities like Donetsk. Notwithstanding a sudden flare up in the regions bordering Russia I think it more likely that Putin pauses for a short period whilst he absorbs the fall out from his annexation of Crimea and consolidates his hold over the Russian media, eliminating any remaining independent voices. He is then more likely to seek to put pressure on Belarus and Moldova to ‘integrate’ more closely with the Russian Federation. Whatever moves he makes we are now in a very uncertain and different age from that which emerged from the
 |
| Tsar of All The Russia's |
What happens next will fill chapter after chapter of future history books. I doubt that it will be good. As Timothy Garton Ash says ‘…with rhetoric more reminiscent of 1914 than 2014, Putin's Russia is now a revanchist power in plain view.’[4]
As to forecasting the future course of events history may haunt us but it rarely provides clear and coherent lessons.
[1] Needless to say this ‘persecution’ existing only in Hitler’s head., though it is true that the German minority in Czechoslovakia though had been a privileged elite under the Hapsburgs, now they found themselves merely ordinary citizens on an equal footing with other citizens, though of course to the Nazi mentality this did constitute persecution. They had incidentally, unlike the German community of Danzig, never been citizens of the German state.
[2] As McMeekin describes the invading armies were soon to be disabused; imagining Ukrainian to be just another dialect they were astonished to find that they could not understand what their fellow Slavs were saying, whilst they were met with outright hostility by the Poles and, understandably give Russia’s record, the Jews. McMeekin record that ‘…between 500,000 and 1 million Jews were expelled from their homes under Russian military administration between 1914 and 1917, along with 250,000 Germans.’ See The Russian Origins of The First World War, Belknap Harvard 2011, p94-95.
[3] Though Ukrainians seeing Russians as their Slav brothers does not necessarily equate with wishing to see Ukraine swallowed up by Russia again. Only in Galicia, which in the last 100yrs has experienced both Austro-Hungarian and Polish rule, is this feeling of unity negligible.
4] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/crimea-ukraine-shooting-pivotal-struggle-heartlands
Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.
Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.
