Despite What Kremlin Thinks, Moscow Shifted Crimea from RSFSR to Ukrainian SSR in 1954 for Economic Rather than Political Reasons, Kolezov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – Despite what Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky says, Moscow transferred Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 not to gain votes for Nikita Khrushchev or other political reasons but rather for economic ones concerning the recovery of that region from the results of World War II, Dmitry Kolezyov says.

            On his telegram channel, the Russian journalist says that Medinsky’s falsification of history on this point raises broader questions about how reliable the history textbooks he is overseeing the rewriting of. But this Crimean question is important in its own right (t.me/kolezev/16356 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/krym-i-mify-medinskogo).

            In the course of a conversation with Putin, Medinsky made two points about that historical event. On the one hand, he said that Khrushchev transferred Crimea to win votes from Ukrainian comrades because of the power struggle in Moscow. And on the other, he suggested that the party leader did so because he was a died in the wool Ukrainophile.

            Neither of these arguments is true, Kolezov says. Khrushchev didn’t need the votes of Ukrainian party members as there was no party congress even scheduled at which their support might have been needed. They amounted to only 15 percent of Central Committee members. And no one accused Khrushchev of Ukrainophilia until after he was dead and rarely before 1991.

            The reason that Moscow agreed to the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was economic rather than political, Kolezyov says. Kyiv was far better positioned to help Crimea recover from the destruction of World War II than was the RSFSR government in Moscow. And indeed, he adds, that calculation proved to be correct.

            Moreover, pace Medinsky, shifting territory from one republic to another was hardly rare in the USSR, the journalist continues. This was constantly happening for various reasons “from the ethnic composition of the population to the flourishing of pasture land.” (On that reality, see kommersant.ru/doc/2640080 windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/borders-in-post-soviet-space-were.html which contains my 1990 article for RFE/RL Report on the USSR “Can Republican Borders be Changed?”