Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 11 – The
disintegration of the USSR in 1991, “the greatest catastrophe in the history of
the Russian nation,” left “almost 20 percent” of all ethnic Russians beyond the
borders of the Russian Federation, a situation that must be remedied as it has
been in the past to block threats to the country, according to a Russian
specialist on the CIS.
Igor Shishkin, the deputy director
of the Moscow Institute of the CIS Countries, begins his 5100-word essay on
what he called “the algorithm of the reunification of the Russian nation” by
citing the words of Bismarck that it is useless to dismember Russia because it
will always restore itself (www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1611551.html).
Russians,
as they have been in the past, are once again “a divided nation,” Shishkin
says, and “in practically all the new independent states except Belarus and
Transdnniestria, Russians are put in the position of being second-class people,”
with the “ethnocratic regimes openly pushing for the expulsion of the Russian
population, its discrimination and assimilation.”
Predicting the future is always a
problematic task, the Moscow writer says, and consequently, “instead of
guessing about it, it is always better to turn to the past, especially since
Russia not for the first time has lost territory and the Russian people not for
the first time has been a divided one.”
The most immediate example, he says, was “the
restoration of the territorial integrity” of the country “after the collapse of
the Russian Empire. However, it has to be admitted that in the 1990s, no forces
were to be found in Russia capable through a bloody civil war and through
confrontation with the entire world to impose their will on the post-Soviet
space in the way that the Bolsheviks did on the post-imperial one.”
But that is far from the only
experience Russia has had in this regard, Shishkin continues, and he cites the
examples of the partition of Poland and the inclusion of both Belarusian and
Ukrainian lands in the Russian state, both in the eighteenth century and in the
early years of the twentieth.
According to the
Moscow researcher, “the experience of the reunification of Belarus with Russia
most fully corresponds with the realities of the present day” and the earlier
efforts are “important for an understanding of the reunification of the Russian
nation and also for an understanding of the fate of countries” that
discriminate against Russians.
“The process of the reunification of
Belarus and Russia has been invariably “connected with the process of the
division” of Poland and even the latter’s extinction as an independent state,
an outcome for which Shishkin says the Poles have only themselves to blame
because of their anti-Russian policies.
Initially, he says, “the USSR was
not able to reclaim Western Belarus and Western Ukraine militarily.” But in
1929, Hitler’s strategic needs and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact opened “a window
of opportunity” in that regard, and “Stalin like Catherine II used it to the fullest.”
And he notes that even the Western powers who opposed his actions ultimately
accepted that Poland could exist only within its own ethnographic borders.
According to Shishkin, all these
historical examples are suggestive about what is happening now and what will
happen in the future. He suggests that “the
development of events” regarding what he calls “the divided Russian nation”
will proceed “according to one and the same algorithm:”
o First, he
writes,, “the Russian community will not adapt to the situation, will not
emigrate, and will not assimilate. It will preserve its national
self-consciousness and struggle for equality.”
o Second, “the
Russian state will inevitably be drawn into the struggle for the rights of
compatriots abroad.”
o Third, any “ethnocratic
regime, operating with the support of the West will not move to establish
equality of the Russians with the titular nationality.”
o Fourth, “the
risk of clashes with the West will not permit the Russian state to force the
ethnocratic regime to observe the rights of compatriots.”
o Fifth, “the need
by one or several great powers, in support of interests that are vitally
important to it, for the support of Russia will open ‘a window of opportunity’
for Russian policy in the area of the defense of the rights of compatriots.”
o And sixth, “the
result will be a radical resolution of the problem, the reunification of the Russian
nation and the liquidation not only of the ethnocratic regime but also of the
state heading it.”
“Thus it was in the eighteenth and
twentieth centuries,” Shishkin says, arguing that “there is every reason to
support that it will be the same in the twenty-first.”
“The Russian nation has survived the
catastrophe of the 1990s,” he continues, and there has been “a slow but
undeviating growth of its vital forces and of Russian national
self-consciousness.” To be sure, “the Russian nation has many extremely
dangerous problems.” But that was true in the past and it did not prevent
unification then.
In the Baltic countries, in Ukraine,
and in Moldova, ethnic Russians are beginning to speak out in defense of their
rights. These are the first flowers and “while
they don’t yet constitute a spring, they allow one to judge about the trend.” And the same thing is true about Russian
government support for them.
Unfortunately, Shishkin says, one
can cite numerous cases when the interests of compatriots have been sacrificed “by
the Russian ruling class,” but again and “alas, there were not a few such cases
in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.” Indeed, he says, “if the fate of
the Russian depended on the good or evil will of specific rulers or senior
officials, there would not have been any Russians at all already a long time
ago.”
Unlike in the 1990s when Russian
politicians denigrated everything Russian, Shishkin says, “now only marginal
figures do that.” And “speaking about ethnic Russian interests has become a
mark of political respectability.” In his view, the time is coming and coming
soon when the government will be guided by that.
At present, Shishkin argues, “the
West in the name of weakening Russia as its geopolitical competitor completely supports
the discrimination of Russians by the post-Soviet ethnocracies. But the
geopolitical picture of the world is changing fast” and for Moscow, “a window
of opportunity is opening again.”
Obviously, the course of events depends on whether the current
president or his successor will seize these opportunities as Catherine the
Great and Stalin did, Shishkin concludes, but he adds that “while Russians remain
Russians, the response to disintegration wil always be the reunification of the
Russian nation.”
According to the Moscow writer, “there
is no other way,” something he says that German Chancellor Bismarck “understood
precisely.”
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