‘If Russia Doesn’t Achieve Its Goals in Ukraine, All Former Soviet Republics will Lose Sovereignty,’ Rubayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 1 – If, “God forbid,” Moscow doesn’t achieve its goals in “the special military operation in Ukraine,” then “there will be no reason to speak abut any sovereignty whatsoever of the other post-Soviet states,” Regnum commentator Aslan Rubayev says. In that sense, “the situation now is absolutely analogous to the situation of 1941.”

            And that means, he continues, “as Aleksandr Lukashenka said at the summit of the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty, we must stand as a single front to oppose the Western threat. If the post-Soviet countries won’t have a common plan and follow it, then they will lose their independence” (svpressa.ru/world/article/344766/).

            This statement is striking not only because it is a rare example of a Russian mention of the possibility of Moscow’s possible defeat in Ukraine but also because Moscow is now desperately searching for ways to counter the increasingly independent-minded stance of the leaders of the former Soviet republics.

            Given the almost sacred nature of World War II in Russian eyes, the invocation of 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and almost succeeded in defeating it is remarkable; and a suggestion that the situation now is like that suggests a level of desperation in Moscow far greater than many have thought.

            And Rubayev’s call for unity among the post-Soviet republics and his suggestion that Moscow must end criticism of the Soviet past by Russians lest non-Russians assume that such criticism of Moscow is acceptable only underscores just how worried some in the Russian capital now are.

            The trigger for Rubayev’s comments was a speech yesterday by Shvakat Mirziyoyev, the president of Uzbekistan (president.uz/en/lists/view/5478). Speaking on the Uzbek National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, the leader stressed that “it was not easy to gain independence” and that Uzbeks had struggled for it for a century.

            Describing the Soviet government as “a totalitarian regime,” Mirziyoyev said that even at its end in the 1980s “thousands of our compatriots were thrown into prison and persecuted under various slanderous pretexts.” And he added that there had been many other cases of repression which must not be forgotten.

            Even that entirely honest assessment of the past was too much for Sergey Aksyonov of Moscow’s Svobodnaya pressa. He reached out not only to Rubayev but also to Sergey Udaltsov, the coordinator of the Left Front for comments. Both denounced what the Uzbekistan president had said.

            Udaltsov for his part took on MIrziyoyev’s arguments even more directly. “The USSR was not an empire which enslaved and conquered peoples as now some often say. On the contrary, it helped the peoples to develop and invested in the republics. Central Asia received a massive amount of resources, colossal industry and numerous jobs.”

            “But now everything is reduced to repressions and the undermining of national pride. In fact, this was a family of peoples. For ordinary citizens, the rebirth of the USSR would give a large number of economic pluses, the most important of which would be meaning for their lives,” he said.

            “I hope,” Udaltsov conclude, “that pseudo-elites will not be able to stupefy people and that a renewed Union will appear on the map of the world.”