In 2020, the Russian Empire Died ‘Once and for All,’ Tsipko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 1 – The year 2020 may be remembered for many things, including the pandemic; but perhaps its most important development has been the final disintegration of the USSR and more than that the moment at which the Russian Empire died “once and for all,” Aleksandr Tsipko says.

            “The disintegration of the USSR was no geopolitical catastrophe,” pace Putin, the senior Moscow commentator says. “A catastrophe is when something living, whole and powerful dies which otherwise could have continued to exist for a long time.” That was not what the USSR was (mk.ru/politics/2020/12/01/sssr-pogib-blagodarya-sluchayu.html).

            It was created by force of arms, and it disintegrated in an entirely logical way. The Baltic peoples who had experienced independence more recently decided to leave, while the Central Asians who had been given statehood moved more slowly. It was the fate of the two other Slavic peoples that was the most dramatic because Russians couldn’t accept they were separate peoples.

            But to recognize that the empire has been falling apart, while essential, does not mean that “we Russians have the right to accelerate this disintegration” by our own actions. Unfortunately, both 30 years ago with the rise of Russian sovereignty and more recently, Russia and Russians have done exactly that.

            According to Tsipko, “behind the illusion that the Russian Federation could maintain its dominating influence on the post-Soviet space and save ‘the Russian world’ stands an inheritance from the Soviet ‘educated community’ that its members have not yet entirely overcome.”

            It is not enough to recognize that the former republics want to move away from Russia; it is vitally important that they want to return to “that ethnic and cultural world in which they lived before they were included in the Russian empire,” the Moldovans toward Romania and the Azerbaijanis toward Turkey to give the two most obvious cases.

            That people in Moscow do understand this reality at least in part helps to explain Russia’s correct decision “not only to distance itself from the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Qarabagh but also to devote all efforts to avoid a military clash with Turkey,” a signal and significant event.

            What is means is that Russian officials are maturing and finally recognizing that Moscow isn’t going to re-assemble all these countries into some new empire. Some countries need Russia still, like Armenia, but even Armenia now looks at Russia as an alien power given its failure to back Yerevan against Baku.

            What this all means, Tsipko continues, is that in this year, 2020, “the Russian Empire really died once and for all. And therefore we must think first of all about the interests of our own country and about how to make Russia richer and a country where many people will be happy.”

            “Russia even now can achieve a very great deal on the post-Soviet space as a peacekeeper, but hardly should we risk our own economic interests in the name of our own Russian utopia.” And again there is evidence from the last few months that Moscow is finally learning that lesson as well.

            “In my view,” Tsipko says, “the disintegration of the USSR was accelerated as a result of talk of our ‘fatherland officials’ about how the borders of the former Soviet republics bear an artificial character.” Now, finally, in the Caucasus, Moscow has turned away from such dangerous comments.

            “Russia today is required not only to speak about the inviolability of the borders of the Russian Federation but also about the inviolability of borders of the former Soviet republics.” That is why Vladimir Putin de facto did in coming out in support of the restoration of Baku’s control over Azerbaijani territory.

            Being clear about that will reassure many non-Russians, but we have to mean it, Tsipko says. “It is time … to say that we today are above all interested in the development of the Russian Federation as a nation state and that we today give primacy not only to our own sovereignty but to our economic interests.”

            Perhaps, he concludes, “if we really transform ourselves into a successful nation state in all senses of the word and become a fully European country, then the peoples of the former USSR will again begin to look in our direction.” But that is a matter for the future; it is not what Moscow should be expecting and acting on now.