Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 18 – Earlier this month, the governor of Orel Oblast, a Russian region
adjoining Ukraine, called for a commission to promote the integration of the
self-proclaimed Donbass republics, the LNR and the DNR, into the Russian
Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/russia-has-begun-integration-of-donbass.html).
Then, a Moscow commentator picked up
on the idea and urged other federal subjects of the Russian Federation to work
to set the stage, first, for their recognition by the Kremlin as independent and,
then, their inclusion as subjects of the Russian Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/kremlin-urged-to-follow-orel-and.html).
Now, a candidate running for the governorship
of Voronezh has called for his own region to take similar steps to promote those
outcomes and organizing a new ideologically based campaign for other predominantly
ethnic Russian regions to do the same to hasten the process (4pera.ru/news/picture_of_the_day/kandidat_v_gubernatory_arkadiy_minakov_voronezh_gotov_k_kompleksnomu_vzaimodeystviyu_s_respublikami_/).
It is of course possible that these
various moves are arising spontaneously; but it is far more likely that they
reflect a concerted effort by the Kremlin to promote the integration of the
Donbass into the Russian Federation in ways that will remain below the radar
screen of most Western governments.
Once these efforts get going and
become too big to ignore, Moscow is likely to have created a sufficient number
of what diplomats like to call “facts on the ground’ to prompt some in the West
to conclude that they have no option but to support what Vladimir Putin is
doing, however angry they may be about it.
However that may be, the latest move
on this chessboard in Voronezh this week merits attention. Arkady Minakov, a professor at Voronezh State
University who is running for governor as a Rodina Party candidate, declared
that his region and many others are ready to “deepen mutual cooperation” with the
Donbass “republics.”
“We consider the population of the LNR
and DNR as friends and partners,” Minakov says; “they must not be left in
isolation.” They are culturally,
linguistically, historically, and economically closely tied with the Russian
regions along their borders that are part of the Russian Federation.
There is even a European precedent
for this, he says. In 2010, Luhansk and Rostov-na-Donu agreed to be part of the
Euroregion Donbass; and two years later, Donetsk and Voronezh joined that
cooperative region. Minakov says that “the
events of 2014” changed things but in the direction of “stronger and more
confident” relations among the four.
“Since
2014, Voronezh residents, including public and political organizations and
business structures have expressed solidarity with the residents of the LDNR in
various forms. They have begun not
simply to work actively on the preservation and strengthening of the longstanding
ties between Voronezh oblast and the Donbass but to actively develop them.”
Minakov says that “Voronezh at a
minimum is ready for complex integration cooperation with the republics of
Novorossiya. Such work must be carried out in a serious and systemic way with the
support of social and political organizations, business structures and it would
seem the powers that be.”
According to the Rodina
gubernatorial candidate, the integration of these regions requires the dev elopement
of “a new ideology which will be able to overcome the split of the Russian
people. The LNR and DNR, like a large part of Ukraine … does not have any
relationship even to what is called Malorossiya.”
“These corresponding territories
have traditionally been viewed as part of the Russian Empire; they are part of
the imperial state construction.” They are dominated by ethnic Russians,
Russian culture and Russian self-consciousness, he says. And they should be
viewed therefore as a single whole.
That requires dispensing with the
Russophobic lines the Bolsheviks drew on the map and going back to the
traditions of the Russian Empire. The ideology of that time was summed in Count
Uvarov’s trinity – Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. “Translated into present-day language one is
speaking about the ideology of a strong, centralized and sovereign state.”
The Russians of the Donbass should
be part of that state, and Voronezh can help, Minakov concludes.
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