Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 24 – A proposal by Valentina Matvienko to declare the Soviet
government’s 1954 transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR “illegal”
could “lead to war not only between Ukraine and Russia but practically along
the entire perimeter of the present-day Russian Federation, according to Andrey
Zubov.
Such
a proposal, the historian and commentator says, not only violates international
law but also “good sense.” That is because the decision to transfer Crimea was “taken
in another state, the Soviet Union, and by two of its republics,” not by the Russian
Federation, which did not exist then and thus had no role in it (glavpost.com/post/23dec2014/opinion/9593-andrey-zubov-esli-peredacha-kryma-ukraine-nezakonna-znachit-nezakonny-vse-resheniya-soyuza.html).
Were Moscow to follow Matvienko’s
notion, the country would “enter onto the path of absolute legal chaos as far
as territorial issues are concerned.”
The USSR changed the borders of the republics many times – at least 90
by one count, and thus “if [Moscow] considers [Soviet actions] illegal, then
this means that all its actions are illegal – including the establishment of the
USSR in 1922.”
And even if such a declaration were
narrowly drawn, it would inevitably raise questions about how Moscow will
proceed in the future, questions that could not fail to agitate the leaders of
Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russia’s current allies, not necessarily about
occupation but rather about such “legally inadequate attempts” to justify
things ex post facto.
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