Cossacks Launch Petition Drive to Be Included in 2020 Census as a Nation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 17 – Cossacks have launched a petition drive to be listed as a nation in the 2020 all-Russian census. That is a longtime dream of Cossack nationalists, but this current effort is actively opposed by Moscow and so far it has garnered relatively little support (nazaccent.ru/content/31769-kazakov-predlozhili-vnesti-v-perechen-nacionalnostej.html).

            The Russian government and most Russian scholars oppose allowing the Cossacks to be listed as a separate nation for at least three reasons. First, they extrapolate what was true of some Cossacks to all of them. Yes, some of the Cossacks were a military caste created by the Russian state but far from all of them were.

            Second, there is concern that if Moscow allowed Cossacks to identify as a nation, that would inevitably reduce the size of the ethnic Russian nation and its proportion in the population relative to non-Russians. The Russian share of the population is already declining and the appearance of a Cossack option would push it down further.

            And third, many in the Russian capital fear that allowing the Cossacks to officially identify as members of a nation would open the way for some of them to demand the restoration of Cossack lands and even the creation of a Cossack republic, developments that could threaten Moscow’s control especially in the North Caucasus.

            Under the terms of the petition drive, the Cossacks must garner about 99,600 signatures for their appeal to be taken up by the government, something that in itself would not guarantee a positive outcome but that would represent a major victory for Cossack activists (roi.ru/56580/). After a few days and with little publicity, the petition has been signed by only 354 people.

            Despite this slow start and Russian government opposition, mostly expressed in this case by not providing any media coverage of the appeal, the numbers are certain to grow in the coming days and weeks.  Whether it can approach the nearly 100,000 signatures needed to clear the next hurdle, however, seems unlikely at least anytime soon.

            For background on Cossack aspirations and where the movement is now, see this author’s “Cossackia: No Longer an Impossible Dream?” Jamestown Eurasia Daily Monitor, February 21, 2019 at  jamestown.org/program/cossackia-no-longer-an-impossible-dream/ and the sources cited therein.

Paris Summit Offers Five Lessons for Russia, Tsipko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 17 – Senior Moscow commentator Aleksandr Tsipko says that the recent Paris summit on Ukraine, at which the Russian-speaking Ukrainian president suddenly appeared to turn into a Ukrainian nationalist, gave Russia five important if unwelcome lessons that Moscow must take in if it is to develop a successful policy for the future.

            Writing in Moskovsky komsomlets, Tsipko says that wars have a logic of their own and that the five years of war in Ukraine has transformed that country in ways Moscow has not yet fully recognized but must ultimately accept (mk.ru/politics/2019/12/17/logika-voyny-russkoyazychnyy-prezident-zelenskiy-prevratilsya-v-ukrainskogo-nacionalista.html).

            These lessons include:

·         First, “as a result of what has taken place in the last five years, Ukraine already cannot fail to be anti-Russian.”  Some Ukrainians may be willing to make deals with Moscow, but the overwhelming majority of the population and its leaders will view Russia as hostile to their nation and be hostile in return.

·         Second, Tsipko continues, that means that “it is time to recognize at the least that now there is no basis for restoring partnership relations with Ukraine. And thank God, all our Russian illusions connected with Zelensky’s coming to power have dissipated.”

·         Third, “Ukraine will never, as long as it is an independent state turn away from its course toward the West and NATO.” That isn’t something Moscow can change at least by force, and the Moscow commentator adds that Zelensky’s predecessor, Poroshenko, was “no nationalist” but rather someone who tried to express the Ukrainian national idea in a more civilized form.”

·         Fourth, “if Ukraine remains an independent state, then the so-called ‘values of dignity’ born of the revolution of 2013 will remain the basis of national identity of the new Ukraine.”  Pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine who suggest otherwise are suffering “in the best case” from illusions.”

·         And fifth, “Russia must come to terms with these inevitable realities and build its strategy from the interests of its own population above all.” It must overcome its tendency to equate control over larger space with greater power and recognize that it needs to make itself sufficiently attractive that almost 40 percent of its young won’t want to leave.

But what is “the chief thing,” Tsipko concludes, is that the Kremlin needs to make decisions now to revive among its own people “faith in the future” rather than assuming that it can achieve that by continuing aggression against Ukraine, a country that has already made its decision against the Russia of today.    

By Annexing Belarus, Putin Would be Threatening Russia’s Future Territorial Integrity, ‘Nezygar’ Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 17 – Vladimir Putin often says that Lenin laid a mine under the continuing existence of the Russian state by creating the non-Russian republics, but now, the Nezygar telegram channel suggests the Kremlin leader himself may be doing the same thing by pursuing a union state with Belarus.

            Like Lenin who established the republics as a compromise to save his own power, Nezygar says, Putin has been pursuing a union state with Belarus primarily to solve his 2024 problem, seeking to create a new state so that he can continue to be president without having to violate the Russian constitution (https://t.me/russica2/21821).

            The telegram channel says that this short-term focus appears to hav led Putin to move in a direction that, if as seems likely the union state were to collapse as the USSR did, could lead to the loss of an enormous part of the state Moscow now controls. That direction, as suggested by Nikolay Sergeyev of the Institute for the CIS involves expanding Belarus while annexing it.

            Sergeyev, the channel continues, has said that there are plans to rename Belarus the Belorussky district and to add to it Smolensk, Pskov and Kaliningrad Oblasts, something he and others apparently believe would soften the blow to Belarusians over the loss of their sovereignty and independence.

            According to Nezygar, Lukashenka has long been aware of such plans. After all, a short time ago, he “publicly recalled that in Soviet times, the issue of joining Kaliningrad Oblast to Belarus was considered.” His words at the time were viewed as hyperbolic and absurd but now they appear to reflect talk in Moscow.

            But if the Kremlin were to decide to add several Russian oblasts to a future Belarusian “district” within a union state, such an entity could eventually play exactly the opposite role that Moscow intends. Were the union state to collapse, Moscow would lose far more territory and its borders pushed further east than anyone now can imagine.  

            There is an obvious precedent for such a conclusion, the telegram channel says; and that was Khrushchev’s decision to give Crimea to Ukraine to cement Ukraine more fully into the USSR.  But a few decades later, Nezygar continues, that action helped power Ukraine’s independence and the demise of the Soviet Union.

            The telegram channel’s suggested scenario may be no more than an effort by some in Moscow to block discussions of creating an expanded Belarus “district,” but it may also be something more, the recognition by at least a few in Moscow that absorbing Belarus could backfire.

            After all, to recall a slightly more distant example, many have suggested that had Stalin not annexed the three Baltic countries, western Belarus and western Ukraine, the Soviet Union might have lasted far longer given the impact of the national movements in the Baltics and of the western portions of Belarus and Ukraine in the national movements in those two republics.