Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 4 – Russian opposition
leader Aleksey Navalny, like many others in Russia and abroad, says that
referenda both past and future are the only basis for resolving the conflict
over Crimea and that earlier votes in the Saarland provide a useful analogy on
how to proceed.
But Russian commentator Andrey
Illarionov says that Navalny and by implication others who share his confidence
in a referendum as a solution in the case of Crimea are misguided and that the
history they invoke is both more complicated and less positively useful than
they imagine (echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1560892-echo/).
And he suggests
that a more useful comparative case for Crimea, its current plight and its
possible future, is not the two Saar referenda but rather the annexation of
Eastern Pomerania and Danzig by Adolf Hitler, an action that became the trigger
of Germany’s broader invasion of Poland and thus the start of World War II in
Europe.
Navalny,
Illarionov says, made “several mistakes,” above all about the population of
Crimea, the citizenship status of its residents, and the relationship between the
number of residents and the number of citizen-voters. The population of Crimea is “not three
million but 2,285,000.” Not all of these people are citizens of Russia, and the
share of those who could take part in a referendum is thus an inaccurate mirror
of the population as a whole.
Moreover,
Illarionov says, Navalny is wrong to equate the earlier Crimean referendum with
the Scottish referendum on independence. “Scotland’s territory was not occupied
by foreign forces,” and no one imposed the idea of a referendum on it in
violation of laws. And of course, “the majority of [Scotland’s] people voted
against leaving Great Britain.”
But perhaps
Navalny’s biggest error – or at least the one that could have the greatest
impact on the uninformed – is his suggestion that the two referenda in the
Saarland (in 1935 and 1955) are appropriate models for the future of Crimea.
With regard to
the first, the vote took place in “complete correspondence” with the Treaty of
Versailles. No one recognized the Saar as part of France: it was under
international administration. And at the
time of the vote, Illarionov continues, the Saar “was not occupied by German
forces,” in sharp contrast to the situation in Crimea.
With regard to
the 1955 vote, “the idea of an independent Saarland state did not receive the
supporter of the voters” and “this was interpreted as the desire of the Saar
population to join West Germany.” It was
not part of France, it was the subject of international negotiations, and its
borders were never recognized as those between France and Germany.
“As is clear from
this brief historical outline,” Illarionov says, “both Saar referenda and more
generally both processes of defining the internationally recognized status of
the Saar differed in principle from the operation of the conquest of Crimea by
Russian forces and the forced alienation of part of the territory of an
independent state in favor of the aggressor.”
As Illarionov
points out, “the key distinction between the Saar methods of defining
sovereignty and those employed in the Crimean case is the constant, scrupulous,
and long-term application of the instruments of international law in the first
case and the absolute lack of these in the second.”
“Violations,
and in particular crude violations, of international law are corrected not by
referenda however significant they are presented or even in fact are but by the
instruments of international law,” Illarionov says; and that is something
Navalny clearly does not get.
There is a case
far more analogous to Crimea than the Saar, but it is not one that Navalny
chooses to cite. That is the German annexation of East Pomerania and Danzig
just before the beginning of World War II. Indeed, the two cases are so similar
at the outset that the former suggests how the latter quite possibly will end.
Both Eastern
Pomerania and Crimea were annexed at the end of the 18th century by
a major European power; both remained within them for a length period; both as
a result of the defeat of these powers became part of states beyond the borders
of their former rulers; and both were territories that some in the former
imperial centers felt properly belonged to them.
“The
independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the two newly formed
states (Poland and Ukraine) were officially recognized as the heirs of their
former sovereigns (Germany and Russia); and the borders of these new states
were supported by international agreements and the statutes of international organizations
(the League of Nations and the UN).”
Both, Illarionov
continues, were within the borders of these new states for about a generation.
Both were subject to aggression from their former sovereigns, and both of these
regions “were occupied and annexed by the attacking powers.” The two occupiers renamed
the regions, but that was not the end of the story.
Eastern
Pomerania and Danzig remained part of Germany for just under six years, after
which it again became part of a restored Poland. The ethnic groups associated with the
aggressor (the Germans) suffered both collectively and personally as a result.
And when it was restored to Polish control, it was renamed.
These things
did not happen as a result of any referendum, Illarionov points out. Rather,
they came about “with the help of the instruments of international law [in the
form of] the decisions of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of the victorious
powers in World War II.” He strongly
implies that the ultimate fate of Crimea will be similarly decided.
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