Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 30 – This week,
Moscow historian Arkady Popov completes his demolition of what he calls the
eight myths of the Krymnash movement with an essay in “Yezhednevny zhurnal”
about the claims of the backers of that trend that the occupation of Crimea
would be something cost-free (ej.ru/?a=note&id=28694).
There is
“something childish” in the assumption that the annexation of Crimea would be
cost-free, he writes, because adults know that “one must pay” for what one
does; and the costs of the Crimean adventure, he suggests, are becoming ever
more obvious in three areas: economic harm,
combat losses, and, what is especially serious, “the barbarization” of
Russia.
The economic costs direct and
indirect of the annexation of Crimea are both easiest and most difficult to specify,
Popov points out. On the one hand, there are statistics about specific costs
and burdens. But on the other, these statistics are by their nature unreliable,
in most cases understated, and occasionally difficult to disaggregate Crimean
from other costs.
The Russian government has said that
over the next five to six years, Moscow will give Crimea a trillion rubles (160
billion US dollars). That means Crimea will be costing the Russian government
more than the entire Far East and all the North Caucasus republics. Only
Ingushetia and Chechnya will have a greater percentage of their budgets paid
for by the center.
There is no basis for optimism that
Crimea will be able to escape from this situation anytime soon, given the
collapse of tourism and the economy more generally on the peninsula, Popov
says. Tourism is down by a third and
visitors coming by rail by 66 times, something air and sea routes cannot hope
to make up.
Industrial production on the
peninsula is down ten percent over the last year, and construction has fallen
by 55 percent. Moreover, the economy has been further disordered by a rash of
illegal privatizations, something that the authorities have supported as a
means of excluding unwanted outside influences, something it has succeeded in
doing.
But the real costs of the Anschluss
are broader because of how that action has affected the Russian economy as a
whole. Production, incomes and GDP are all down, inflation is up, and Russia’s
credit rating has fallen to “junk” status. More and more Russians recognize
this and wouldn’t have voted to annex Crimea if they had had the chance and don’t
now want to spend so much money on this Kremlin project.
The second part of the costs of the
Crimean annexation are human losses, Popov says. While Moscow continues to say
that the annexation cost Russia no loss of life, the fact is that Crimea is
directly connected to the fighting in the Donbas which has claimed thousands of
lives and forced more than a million people to leave their homes.
And the third part of the costs of
Crimea, in many ways the most disturbing, is the way in which that action has
led to “the barbarization of [Russian] society.” It can’t be measured in dollars and cents or
other statistics, but it is much in evidence, extremely serious and widely felt,
the Moscow historian says.”
Since Crimea, Russian society has acquired
“the atmosphere of a besieged fortress,” Popov says, “and with that have
returned almost the entire range of the worst aspects of Soviet consciousness:
the cult of force and contempt for law, suspiciousness to those who think
differently and hatred of liberalism.”
Things haven’t reached the point of “a
real war with ‘Gayeurope,” he continues, but “the murder of Nemtsov shows that
the war which has inflamed Ukraine has come to Russia,” because what the Kremlin
wanted to achieve in Crimea and the Donbas was first and foremost an indication
of what it planned for Russia itself.
The Russian rulers have faced one
obstacle on the path of restoring “a neo-Soviet military-totalitarian project,”
the lack of an ideology which could “seize the masses” and explain “what we are
fighting for.” In Soviet times, people
knew they were fighting for communism; but now Russians have learned only
relatively recently that “we are building ‘the Russian world.’”
“Judging from the signals coming
down from on high,” Popov says, “this will be a marvelous new world where there
won’t be any sodomites and transvestites or foreing agents and liberals, where
all will study only on the basis of correct textbooks and no one will ask
incorrect questions, where there won’t be horizontal social ties but only
vertical command ones.”
Of course, this is
barbarism, Popov says, and however many claims are made that it corresponds to
traditional Russian values, one should remember that these values, those of “barracks
patriotism, slavery, and obscurantism,” were denounced by Russian writers
already in the 19th century.
But in the current environment, the
promotion of such values has been aided by the elimination of the capacity for
shame among Russia’s rulers and many of its people. “Khrushchev and Brezhnev
sent tanks into Budapest and Prague … but why openly unite Hungary and
Czechoslovakia to the USSR?”
They knew how the world would react,
and they even turned down the Bulgarians twice when they asked to be absorbed
into the USSR. They did so because they
wanted to maintain appearances, but now, with the collapse of shame and the
emergence of shamelessness, that constraint has disappeared.
“Of course,” Popov says, “the
destruction of the culture of shame in Russia began not with Crimea but much
earlier,” but “mass shamelessness is the logical price for ‘Crimea is Ours.’
After Crimea ‘everything became possible,’ for all around are enemies and war
and in war what shame can there be except avoiding battle?”
In this situation, Russians have
seen their identity reduced to that of a tribe and the meaning of their lives
to those in a state of war in which primitive energies are released and those
who do not want to follow are driven out – much of the educated population – or
oppressed.
But that also has entailed a serious
additional cost, Popov points out. He
cites Nikolay Travkin’s observation that what Moscow did in Crimea “destroyed
[Russia’s] reputation as a seirous international partner” and meant that no one
would any longer trust anything its leaders said or signed.
And that is not just about Putin,
Popov says. “Putin came and Putin will leave.” This is a situation in which “all
Russia and its people who supported the Crimean ‘thievery’ for a long time
forward will be conceived by the civilized world (and not only the Western but
the Eastern as well) as a country with which it is senseless to reach
agreements with.”
Russia’s isolation after Crimea was
highlighted by the vote at the UN on recognizing the Crimean “referendum.” Only
ten countries voted with Russia – none of the other BRICS states, only two CIS
members, and its remaining “friends:” Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua,
Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea.
The one remaining price Russia may
yet have to pay concerns the possibility that Crimea will trigger a shift from
its current authoritarian system to full-blown totalitarianism or anarchy. The chances for the former seem quite large,
but there are three steps Moscow has not yet made and may not be able to make
to get there.
First of all, it has to come up with
a kind of Russian nationalism that won’t lead to the explosion of the country
which includes many non-Russians.
Second, it needs a new “’Iron Curtain,’” something that will preclude
Russian development. And third, it needs a strong and effective state.
Curiously, this last requirement is
one that Russia is not now meeting, as the murder of Nemtsov shows, Popov
argues. And consequently, what Crimea is leading Russia to is less likely to be
totalitarianism than toward a new time of troubles, not “a new Stalin and a new
Ivan the Terrible” but something perhaps even worse.
Of course, Popov concludes, the
coming time of troubles will not be like that of the beginning of the 17th
or of the 20th centuries, but rather something new – “and this will
be a worthy repayment for all our achievements” in Crimea.
