Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 18 – Polls
purporting to show that a majority of Crimean Tatars now support the Russian
occupation of their homeland must be treated with skepticism rather than
invoked to justify what was and remains a naked act of Vladimir Putin’s aggression
against Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars.
Unfortunately, in a world where
mirror-imaging is the norm, many are inclined to treat polls taken among those
who live under increasingly authoritarian regimes as having the same meaning
that they do among those who live in freedom. The latest example of this is an
article in the Washington Post today (washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/18/six-years-20-billion-russian-investment-later-crimeans-are-happy-with-russian-annexation/).
It may be that some Crimean Tatars
have changed their minds, primarily because they may have concluded that there
is little chance that the current situation of occupation is going to end. But
the real reason is the nature of the increasingly repressive regime they live
under and the dangers that criticizing it entail.
That reality is highlighted in a
Facebook post by Mariia Shynkarenko, a PhD candidate at the The New School for
Social Research in New York who has done extensive research in Crimea and who
has experienced at firsthand the fears the occupiers have instilled in the Crimean
Tatars (facebook.com/masha.shynkarenko/posts/10213957051394100).
The article’s ”statement that 39% of
Crimean Tatars supported the Russian annexation in 2014 and [that] 58% do in
2019 is utterly untrue,” she writes. “It is no secret that there can be no
objective sociological survey or polling in Crimea or any other region that is
occupied by the foreign power. Ukrainian scholars know that all too well and do
not even try any undertakings in this direction.
“Not only are the procedures required by
methodology is impossible to meet (such as physical protection of respondents
from government retaliation) but the results are very unreliable and
compromising.
“In the states where freedom of speech and
demonstration is curtailed and punished by law, the likelihood that someone
will give a truthful response is minimal. In order to learn what people truly
think under the authoritarian rule, it requires many months of hard work of
building personal relationships and trust between the researcher and the
informant.
“The fact that most of my respondents in
Crimea preferred to speak to me in private (their apartments) rather than
public setting (café, restaurants) is already telling of the overwhelming fear
that guides their daily lives. Given the above explanation, any sociological
survey is inevitably biased, especially the one conducted by the Russian
polling organization.
“Moreover, one does not need to be a
sociologist to see the overwhelming biases in the mentioned research. General
knowledge of a broader historical and socio-political context of Crimea is
sufficing to understand that the Crimean Tatars have traditionally been a major
pro-Ukrainian force in the peninsula since Ukrainian independence in 1991 and
there is an abundant amount of evidence demonstrating the Crimean Tatar
unanimous resistance to Russian tanks and military in 2014.
“It is not difficult to understand their
motives if one knows the history of Russian colonialism and imperialism in
Crimea. Therefore, the number 39% is convincing only to those who know nothing
about the region and its people. The thesis that 58% of Crimean Tatars are
happier now is even more hypocritical as Crimean Tatars are the one category of
the Crimean population who have suffered the most since the occupation.
“According to the human rights
organization, Crimean Tatar Resource Center, in 2019 [alone], there were 86
raids of the Crimean Tatar households, 157 detentions, 194 interrogations, 335
arrests, and 578 violations of the right to due process. (ctrcenter.org/en/analytics/179-analysis-of-violations-of-human-rights-in-the-occupied-crimea-in-2019),”
not to speak of “the overall state of fear and terror regular Crimean Tatars
experience in their workplace and daily life. Spending three weeks in Crimea in
January 2020, I witnessed this first hand.
“It
is not difficult, therefore, to conclude that since the methodology is
compromised and some of the presented inferences are plainly wrong, the entire
article is untrustworthy. Even worse, failing to convey the true spirit of
people, the so-called researchers have taken away and distorted hundreds of
thousands of voices, who under the occupation have no chance to speak for
themselves.
“Social responsibility that should guide
every social scientist is precisely about guaranteeing that though we cannot
immediately change the predicament of our subjects, the least we can do is to
make sure their true voices are heard.
“[And] lastly, the article based on the
so-called ‘research’ may have formidable consequences in terms of international
politics and actions of particular states who, relying on this optimistic
account, might reverse their sanctions or ease their pressure on Russia to
comply with the international law.”
In reading Shynkarenko’s words, one is
reminded of the sad fact that dictators always have overwhelming support until
they are overthrown when it turns out they have none, something protesters in
Russia this past weekend reminded Putin of by pointing to the case of Ceaucescu
(windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/03/dictators-end-badly-ryazan-protesters.html).
And second, one is also compelled to
recall the old Soviet anecdote about the conversation between an American and a
Soviet citizen in front of Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square. The American says
that in his country, he can stand on the steps of the US Capitol and shout that
the president of the US is a fool.
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