A heavily-protected Russian entry point into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea annexed by Russia in March 2014 (Image: Kommersant.ru)
Many Ukrainians now argue Russia must give Crimea back to Ukraine to have any chance of becoming a free and democratic country, and they are finding some support for that view among Russians — even though it remains the case that “Russian liberalism ends at Ukraine.”
That is because, as many thoughtful Russians understand, Crimea is not only costing Russia enormous sums that should be spent on other things and isolating their country from the West but also because it reinforces the imperial nature of the Russian state, a nature that is incompatible in principle with democracy and freedom.
But few of them are yet ready to acknowledge something else:
Russia in its current borders even without Crimea remains an empire, and it is both the existence of that empire and the Kremlin’s skillful playing on Russian fears of losing it that remain one of the most significant obstacles to escaping from Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule and moving forward.
Ronald Reagan properly called the Soviet Union “an evil empire,” but all too many Russians and people in the West believed that his words applied only to Moscow’s rule over the 11 non-Russian union republics and the three occupied Baltic countries and that when the USSR dissolved, so too did the empire.
Unfortunately, as subsequent events have shown, that has not proved to be the case. Not only has Moscow under Putin sought to rebuild the empire by invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014, but the Kremlin has imposed increasingly imperial relations on the non-Russian nations living within it.
Those nations are its first victims, but they are not the only ones. Ethnic Russians are as well because they are prisoners of the empire that they are routinely told is the only way to keep the country which they identify as theirs in one piece even if it requires the use of violence and other means against the other nations within its borders.
In a commentary for the new After Empire portal, Viktor Buravlyev discusses the difficulties Russians have in facing this reality but argues that only by confronting it head on do they have any chance of becoming a genuinely free and democratic country, albeit one in very different borders.
Russians have been taught to view their “Motherland” (most often with a capital letter) as being defined by “the state borders” and to view their “native region” in contrast and with a slighting “indulgence” as their “’little motherland’” and not to think about how the one is related to the other, the commentator says.
As a result, not only the most devoted “patriots” but “even the most active critics of the powers that be put their hopes on the state, first as ‘Russia without Putin’ and now already on ‘Russia after Putin,’ but with the former ancient paradigm preserved, a paradigm which they do not have the strength or the desire to overcome.”
“Despite knowing all or almost all about the inheritance of the Russian Federation from the Mongol Horde, the Muscovite Principality, the Russian Empire and the USSR [and] about the inevitable triumph of reaction after all attempts at revolution, they all the same believe in the final victory over [this] despotism and transformation of their country into a normal one.”
And these people believe that “naturally,” this country “must be called Russia,” one based on its “remarkable culture and glorious history.” These Russians will celebrate the imperial past and they will treat Lenin with care despite what he did because in their view “people have long been accustomed” to him.
Some of them are now even willing to return Crimea but not “if its residents will be opposed” because “one must not go against the will of the population. Let us conduct an honest referendum and then we’ll see,” Buravlyev sums up their views.
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- While being imprisoned by Russian mercenaries in occupied Ukrainian city Donetsk, Ukrainian activist Iryna Dovhan endured hours of public humiliation and beatings orchestrated by the representatives of the Russian world unleashed by Putin. (Image: social media)
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- Anti-Putin protester Ildar Dadin received 3 years of prison for 4 peaceful single-person protests in Moscow including the one in the photo. His sign says “Russia – get off of Ukraine! No to the war!” (Image: Social media)
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- Russian “Grad” (Hail) multiple-launch rocket systems firing at Ukrainian positions (Image: mediarnbo.org)
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- Flowers left near the Dutch embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine for victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17. The note says in Russian: “Putin, the world will not forgive you.”
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- MH17 Crash Site, July 19, 2014 (Source: Dominique Faget, AFP)
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- Debris at the site of the crash of a Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 with 298 people aboard downed by Russian BUK surface-to-air missile in Russia-occupied east Ukraine, on July 19, 2014. (Image: Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Although Russia formed a tank army using mercenaries in the Donbas and commanded by Russian military regulars, a big war before the end of the year is unlikely. (Image: RIAN)
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- Putin accepting the Russian imperial crown (reproduction) for his 63rd birthday. (Image: meduza.io)
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- The last phase of Putin’s hybrid war: Russian special services soldiers (aka “little green men”)
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- This boy’s name is Omran. His family’s house in Aleppo was hit by one of the Russian bombs that flatten everything within their kill zone. Aleppo, Syria, August 2016 (Photo: Mahmoud Rislan)
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- Russian mercenaries in the Donbas posing with their weapons. This photograph is from an InformNapalm.org investigation of social profiles of Russian mercenaries and servicemen that discovered more proof of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. In this case, it is Russian R-381T2 ‘Taran’ UHF radio monitoring and ‘Torn’ radio intelligence complexes (boxed in red in the background). Image: InformNapalm.org
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- Mercenaries from the 9th Infantry Regiment of Russia’s hybrid military force in the Donbas captured in firefight on June 27, 2016 being interrogated by the Ukrainian Security Service. They stated that they were commanded by officers from the regular Russian army and that a mercenary private’s monthly pay in their unit is 15000 rubles or about $250 U.S. dollars. (Image: video screen capture)
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- Child soldiers in the Russian hybrid army occupying the Donbas, Ukraine (Image: charter97.org)
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- Russia’s FSB arriving to search the house of Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar people Ilmi Umerov, who was arrested on fabricated charges. About 30 agents were brought to the search. Bakhchysarai, Crimea, May 12, 2016 (Image: video capture)
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- Russian occupation forces and mercenaries subdue and escort away a Crimean resident before assaulting the Belbek airbase, outside Sevastopol, Crimea, on March 22, 2014. (Image: AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
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- The Orthodox church in Perevalne belonging to the Kyiv Patriarchate was seized by the Russian occupation force on 1 June 2014
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- Russia is trying to freeze the war in the Donbas and make it into a second depressive Transdniestria. (Image: UNIAN)
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- Troops of the Russian occupation force on parade in Sevastopol, Crimea on May 9, 2016 (Image: sevas.com)
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- A tank of the Russian occupation force in the Ukrainian Donbas got stuck in a trench (Image: kommersant.ru)
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- A Russian occupation force soldier on guard duty next to the captured Supreme Rada of Crimea in Simferopol in February 2014. Next to him a hand-made sign saying “Crimea, Russia.” (Image: kommersant.ru)
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- This is a Russian BMD-2 tank destroyed after crossing the border
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- “Putin means war and poverty!” Meeting of Russian truck drivers in February 2016 (Image: social media)
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- Russian neo-Cossack paramilitaries pose by a Putin monument in St. Petersburg, Russia
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- Russian invasion in Georgia in August 2008. A wounded Georgian woman in the town of Gori, 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi. (Image: Reuters)
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- Putin kissing the stomach of Nikita Konkin in 2006. The recent British investigation into the murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London by his former FSB colleagues using a radioactive poison brought to public attention his allegations that Vladimir Putin is a pedophile (Image: AP)
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- Families with children in a bomb shelter in Donetsk hiding from artillery shelling as result of the Russian military aggression in the Donbas, Ukraine (Image: A. Umanets / Segodnya.ua)
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- A search for survivors at a site hit in December 2015 by Russian airstrikes in Idlib, Syria. “Some Russian airstrikes appear to have directly attacked civilians or civilian objects by striking residential areas with no evident military target and even medical facilities, resulting in deaths and injuries to civilians. Such attacks may amount to war crimes.” said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program. Syrian rebels say most of the strikes have focused on central and northern Syria, where ISIS does not have a strong presence. (Image: Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)
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- A victim of Russian bombing in Syria (Image: social media)
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- A Russian massacre of Syrian school children. Damascus, Syria, December 2015. (Image: Social media)
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- Russian FSB secret police and paramilitaries suppress any open dissent in Crimea and actively search for any hidden resistance to the occupation. Beside using the judicial system to enforce the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula, they employ secret abductions and extrajudicial killings of Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian activists. (Image: GordonUA.com)
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- Some of the five to seven million Russian children are living on the streets as “besprizorniki,” who seldom go to school and often turn to drugs and crime. They too are the collateral damage of Russia’s wars. (Image: imrussia.org)
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- At a mercenary training camp for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow oblast, Russia, September 2015 (Image: ENOT Corp.)
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- The Russian Federation have been using ethnically non-Russian troops for its aggression in Ukraine. Russian Federation servicemen from Chechnia arriving to fight in the Donbas in 2014 (Image: AFP)
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- Devastation caused by the Russian aggression in Donbas, Ukraine (Image: Tim Judah | NYRblog)
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- Devastation caused by Russian aggression in Donbas, Ukraine (village of Peski) (Image: http://maxrokotansky.livejournal.com)
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- Devastation caused by Russian aggression in Donbas, Ukraine (village of Peski) (Image: http://maxrokotansky.livejournal.com)
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- Devastation at the Donetsk airport caused by the Russian military aggression in Donbas, Ukraine (Image: LB.ua)
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- Devastation at Donetsk airport after the military aggression in the Donbas, Ukraine (Image: LB.ua)
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- Devastation caused by the Russian aggression in Donbas, Ukraine (Image: Tim Judah | NYRblog)
But in addition, such liberal Russians call for a new constitution but not a new capital and that document will be prepared “exclusively by worthy people with well-known names and Moscow residence permits.” Those too will be preserved “as a customary formality,” as will the police and the security services and so on and on.
That is required such people think in order that the country not fall apart or into chaos and into a war of all against all, a view that prevents them from seeing the obvious truth: “This is not the case.” Indeed, Buravlyev says, “only after the disappearance of Russia, unconditionally and finally, will the population have the chance to build something new.”
Only then, he concludes, will it be possible “to break out of the vicious circle and the chain of rebirths by destroying the matrix” underlying all of what is on view now. “But to recognize this is hard” because it requires “overcoming the state inside oneself,” a challenge “even if you don’t really love it very much.”
Related:
- After the Glazyev Tapes: what Moscow’s interference in Ukraine means for the Minsk Agreements
- The longer Russia occupies Crimea, the more likely Russia will disintegrate
- Putin has infected Russia with a disease he can’t cure or control, Yakovenko says
- Russian language knowledge declining in country’s non-Russian republics, Barinov says
- Chinese to become second largest ethnicity in Russia, Moscow demographer says
- Sakha Constitutional Court in Russia rules ‘all the territory of Yakutia is the historical motherland of the Yakut people’
- Ethnic clashes replacing ‘dedovshchina’ abuse in Russian military units, Moscow paper says
Tags: Great power imperialism, International, Putin, Putin regime, Russia, Russian colonialism, Russian imperialism, Russian neocolonialism
