Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 6 – Even as Moscow
seeks to impose a civic national identity on the various nations of the Russian
Federation, it is seeking to destroy the civic nation in occupied Crimea that Crimean Tatar leaders had promoted in the
1920s and that had become fully formed by the end of Soviet times, Vadim Shtepa
says.
The regionalist theoretician stresses
that what happened in Crimea can happen elsewhere and thus his words on this
point are especially important. He
suggests that “the term ‘civic nation’ in principle goes beyond an ethnic
format,” some few Russians accept given their fears about the terms “nation”
and “nationality” (ru.krymr.com/a/28215562.html).
“For me,” Shtepa says, “a civic
nation is in the first instance the self-determination of the population of
this or that territory. It is thus a political phenomenon.” And it exists when
that population “proclaims itself a republic, adopts its own constitution and
chooses a president.” When those things
have happened, it is already “formed.”
Of course, he continues, that
process must not be confused with what happens “when such a formation is
created with the help of external force, as was the case in the so-called DNR
and LNR. Here it is obvious that it is impossible to talk about any authentic
existence of civic nations.”
But “the cases of Catalonia and Scotland
are example of civic nations given that the Scots speak the very same language
that residents of England to. For example, the Scots seek European integration,
have already declared that they do not want to completely leave the EU and
demand that their opinion be taken into account.”
When people talk about self-determination
in Crimea, they typically focus on the Crimean Tatars; but in doing so, they
forget that the goal of the original leadership of the Crimean Tatar republic
after the Bolshevik revolution was a civic nation in which all peoples would
share a common political identity, Shtepa says.
By the 1970s, he says, people on the
Ukrainian peninsula in fact “identified themselves not as abstract ‘soviet
citizens,’ Ukrainians of Russians but precisely as Crimeans, especially those
who were born there.” In 1991, they
voted to make their region a republic once again, in 1992, they adopted a
constitution and elected a president.
And it is “interesting,” the Russian
regionalist says, “that this constitution was even more liberal than the one
that existed at that time in Ukraine.” It declared that “Crimea is part of
Ukraine” but must enjoy autonomy “approximately on the same level as the Republic
Tatarstan does inside Russia.”
“Unfortunately,” Shtepa continues, “the
Ukrainian authorities then annulled this constitution, and although the
identification of Crimeans was preserved, there began to appear pro-Russian
attitudes.” Had Kyiv not done so, “it would have been completely possible to
integrate” Crimea into Ukraine, much as has been the case with the Aland
Islands.
Those islands, Shtepa notes, “are an
absolutely Swedish speaking region, but they belong to Finland and do not try
to unite with Sweden. They have broad regional autonomy and understand
perfectly well that the Swedes would never provide them something equivalent.”
Had
Ukraine done the same for Crimea, “separatist attitudes there would never have
arisen.”
Since Moscow’s Anschluss of the
Ukrainian peninsula, “Moscow has done everything to destroy the
self-identification of the Crimeans; but the occupiers have “not been able to
completely change the consciousness of people.” And “as soon as the political situation
changes,” the Crimean identity will reemerge as well as a commitment to remain
with Ukraine.
Given that, Shtepa says, Kyiv right
now should begin “an intensify information campaign” in Crimea, “showing the possibilities
of a joint future” and instead of frightening Crimeans with talk of repression,
“promise investments, European integration, and an end to sanctions,” thereby
undercutting “false Russian propaganda.”
Ukrainians shouldn’t fear Crimean
autonomy, he concludes. Instead, they should recognize that it was “the
suppression of regional autonomy” which “created fertile group for the growth
of separatist attitudes.”
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