Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 29 – Like most
Westerners, Russians have always made a distinction between the three Baltic
countries and the former Soviet republics, but now a Russian analyst says that
by turning to Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are following the Baltic
path, an indication of Moscow’s diminishing influence and thus of its likely
policies toward the six.
Aleksandr Nosovich, a commentator
for the pro-Russian portal, Rubaltic.ru, says that the three new EU associates
have stepped on to “the Baltic path to Europe” without recognizing that “this
path is far from the best” and that it will not bring “the other post-Soviet
republics ... anything good” (rubaltic.ru/article/politika-i-obshchestvo/27062014-baltizatsija/).
That path involves not only
integration in European institutions, Nosovich says, but also membership in “Euro-Atlantic”
ones, a term many Russian commentators use for NATO, the Western alliance of which all three Baltic
countries have been a part for a decade.
But according to Nosovich, the
Baltic path means more than that. It means a headlong rush to integrating with
the West in a quest for status and separation from Russia and the rest of the
post-Soviet space even if this requires the interests of the populations of
these countries to be sacrificed.
While Poland spent a decade
negotiating with the European Union over the terms of entry, the Baltic
countries and now presumably Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia wanted to be separate
from Russia and inside the West so badly that they were ready to accept almost
everything. This “typically Baltic model
of behavior,” Nosovich says, won’t help the others.
According to the Russian analyst,
the Baltic rush to the West has led to “catastrophic” economic decline, the
collapse and disappearance of “almost all industry,” and “an unprecedented
emigration of the population.” Those
same things, in Nosovich’s view, now await Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
If the governments of Ukraine,
Moldova and Georgia were prepared to move more slowly and negotiate with Moscow
as well as with Brussels, they could avoid these negative consequences of “the
Baltic path.” But at present, they seem
incapable of doing that and are caught up in the same emotional world as the
Balts.
They now view themselves as do the
Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians as “’a buffer zone,’ living by the
categories of the cold war and with the complete certainly that it is simpler
to cut ‘the Gordian knot’ of relations with Russia than to sit down together
with it and with the West at a common negotiating table.”
What should give
the three new EU signatories pause, Nosovich says, is that despite the fact
that nationalists have been in power in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for “a
quarter of a century,” young Estonians, young Latvians, and young Lithuanians
are voting with their feet and not simply “emigrating but fleeing abroad.” The same thing awaits others on the Baltic
path.
It is of course the case that in
many of the new EU member countries people want to leave for economic
opportunities elsewhere, Nosovich sys, “but neither in Poland nor in Bulgaria
has this occurred as tragically as in the Baltic countries” – or may occur in
Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
The Russian commentator continues: “In
the long term, the titular nations of the Baltic countries, the Lithuanians,
the Latvians and the Estonians are threatened with extinction and their
languages and national cultures with being forgotten.” Ukrainians, Moldovans
and Georgians should be asking if they want the same fate.
And the minorities in these three
countries should be asking themselves, Nosovich suggests, whether they really
want to live under openly nationalist governments and to suffer the fate of non-citizens
in Estonia and Latvia.
Despite its tendentiousness and
misrepresentation of the Baltic situation, Nosovich’s article is worth noting for
three reasons. First, it is a clear
indication that many Russians view the actions of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia
as the crossing of a rubicon and on their way not only to EU membership but
ultimately to NATO membership as well.
Second, it suggests that Moscow may
now use against these three countries not only the economic and political
leverage it has from other things but also the ideological messages and covert
activities it has deployed against the societies and polities of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania over the past two decades.
And third – and this may be the most
important – Nosovich’s article suggests that Moscow now sees the six as a
common group against whom it may deploy increasingly common methods, something
that could presage new and harsher Russian actions both against the countries
which have chosen “the Baltic way” and against the Baltic countries themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment