Kyiv Should Change Its Message in Kursk from ‘Against Russia’ to ‘For Kursk’ and for All Other Russian Regions, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – Up to now, Kyiv has explained its actions in Kursk either to create a buffer between Ukraine and Russia or as the basis for negotiations between the two countries to end the war; but the Ukrainian authorities have another option, one that could lead to the transformation of Russia and thus represent a real victory for Ukraine, Vadim Shtepa says.

            It is obvious that “it is impossible to advance one’s own position by purely negative slogans” like “’against Russia,” the editor of the Tallinn-based regionalist portal Region.Expert says. Such messages have the unintended effect of causing Kursk residents to “rally round the Kremlin leader” (svoboda.org/a/rozhdenie-kurskoy-respublikfi-vadim-shtepa-o-fantomah-i-shablonah/33100918.html).

            And it should be obvious that one such positive message would involve support for an independent Kursk republic, something that would not just be a mirror-image to the Russian-created DPR and LPR inside Ukraine but rather and more importantly represent “the elimination of the Russian imperial principle as such.”

            Since at least the end of Soviet times, there has been near universal recognition that the Muscovite state is an empire as far as its non-Russian republics is concerned, Shtepa continues; but there has been far less understanding that that state is an empire as far as its predominantly ethnic Russian regions is concerned as well.

            Such predominantly ethnic Russian regions as Kursk as just as much colonies as are the non-Russian republics. They cannot set their own agendas or elect their own leaders. In some respects, the republics are better off because they are far more widely recognized as colonies, something few regions are.

            “In 1993, the governor of the Sverdlovsk region Eduard Rossel and the local council of people's deputies proclaimed the Ural Republic,” Shtepa recalls. “Their goal was not ‘an exit from the Russian Federation,’ but only the rise of regional political and economic self-government to the level of the neighboring republics - Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.”

            As Kseniya Kirillova, a journalist from the Urals now living in the US, notes, Yeltsin suppressed this move because he and his associates “believed tha thte acquisition of republic status by a region with a predominantly ethnic Russian population was a step toward the collapse of Russia itself” (region.expert/new-ural/).

            Yeltsin may have been on to something, although the decision he took compromised the possibility of making Russia a genuine democratic federation. As Shtepa notes, two centuries earlier, the formation of an independent American Republic, although its residents spoke English, did mark “the beginning of the end of the British Empire.”

            “Today,” the regionalist commentator continues, “Moscow’s imperial propaganda broadcasts on behalf of ‘all Russians;’ but if the Kursk Republic, independent of Moscow, declares itself, that will shatter this paradigm.” And that doesn’t mean that Kursk will isolate itself but rather build equal relations with its neighbors “only without any imperial ‘vertical.’”

            To be sure, Shtepa concludes, “some may say that ‘a Kursk Republic never existed’ and therefore is something imaginary. But everything in this world once began from scratch. At one time the United States didn’t exist; and it is useful to remember that most EU countries were created by those who were once called ‘separatists.’”