Window on Eurasia: 1612 Events Russians Mark Today Analogous to 2014 Events in Ukraine, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 4 – The events of 1612 Russians are commemorating today are in many ways remarkably analogous to those of the 2014 Maidan and its consequences in Ukraine, according to Yevgeny Ikhlov, an observation that carries with some obvious if disturbing consequences for Russians.

 

            If one considers “what really happened in Muscovy and Eastern Europe in November 1612 and compares this to the events in Ukraine and Russia over the last year,” one discovers some remarkable parallels, which should be the occasion for reflection on the part of both Russians and Ukrainians (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=54587AAD8A242).

 

            Ikhlov describes the events of 1612 in the following way. Polish King Sigismund III, who came from the Swedish Vasa dynasty, had succeeded at enormous cost in creating “an East European alternative to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation” with the establishment of a networked “confederation of states in Central Europe.”

 

            But Sigismund needed “additional military forces” to restore himself to the Swedish throne and therefore installed his son Vladislav as tsar in Muscovy, a move he assisted by having the latter convert to Orthodoxy and promise to give “his new subjects an analogue of the British Magna Carta.”

 

That came at the price of leaving Moscow “a satellite” of Cracow even though as Ikhlov notes, Vladislav was “selected for the Moscow throne according to completely legitimate methods for the time.”  And consequently, dissatisfaction with and then opposition to foreign rule soon developed in Muscovy.

 

            In modern parlance, those most dissatisfied with Polish rule were the leaders of major capital, including the magnate Minin, together with “well-known field commanders” like Princes Pozharsky and Cherkassky, who “created an analogue to the Ukrainian National Guard.” These detachments “took Moscow and forced the Polish garrison of the Kremlin to surrender, very politely,” to be sure.

 

            “As a result,” Ikhlov writes, “after a few months, a Sobor of a completely Maidan type was organized in Moscow. The Romanovs, who had not been “particularly” involved with Vladislav, were chosen as the new dynasty as they had been supporting the False Dmitry, “and this was the price of their exit from this adventure.”

 

            In their version of these events, Russia’s current rulers, “in contrast to” their tsarist and Soviet predecessors, “stress the significance of ‘the selection of a tsar by the people,’” a rereading of what happened that is reflected in such popular treatments of the subject as the recent film, “1612.”

 

 

 

            Today’s holiday, Ikhlov continues, was dreamed up in the Kremlin not only to replace the November 7^th commemorations of Soviet times “but also as a manifestation of the new relationship of civil society in the country” – the role of the former in respectfully “calling to the kingdom a sovereign ruler,” this time around a KGB officer.

 

Viewed from this perspective Ikhlov argues, today’s holiday offers four lessons: First, “November 4 in the Russian Federation is celebrated as a complete analogue to the Maidan, including its final act – the driving out of interventionists and their supporters and then the participation of Ukraine in the disintegration of Russia.”

 

Second, Polish intervention had the effect of generating “a very serious domestic opposition.” Third, “the new Romanov dynasty 35 years later introduced serfdom,” then took control of Ukraine, and “after a half a century began the widespread persecution of Orthodox fundamentalists,” the Old Believer.”

 

But fourth, and perhaps most important, having thrown out Vladislav, Ikhlov points out, “Russia lost a chance to obtain a constitution for 300 years.” It missed an opportunity to integrate with Europe for 200, and it did not gain control over the Baltic coast or Finnish Karelia for a century and without the war it had to unleash to do that.

 

This very complexity four centuries ago and now perhaps is the best explanation why so many Russians today view this holiday as just a day off from work and why those who are participating in its commemoration are deeply divided about what it means -- the two Russian Marches in Moscow oppose one another over Ukraine -- and what Russians should expect or do next.