Supposedly eastern Ukraine is full of people who ethnically and politically identify with Russia. Are they an outlier?
I’m surprised after the Ukranian famines under Stalin that there are Ukranians who want to go back to Russia. But that was 80 years ago, and things change a lot over the decades (Germany & Israel have good relations for example, so do the US & UK, or UK & France. Fighting in the past doesn’t mean nations can’t get along in the future).
What is in it for them? Is joining Russia like joining the EU, they feel it will increase their economic opportunities, standard of living, civil/political rights? Or is it more a cultural and racial identification?
Perhaps this is a basic question that has been asked, but is most of eastern europe being asked to choose between joining western europe or Russia? hasn’t that battle already been determined since so many eastern european states are part of the EU and have moved up the freedom index of freedom house (ie, I doubt they’d want to give up their liberties to join an autocrat like Putin)?
Russia has seen some pretty good economic growth the last few decades, but so have most ex-soviet states. So I don’t think that’d be an appeal, those states have been growing fine w/o being tied to Russia.
First you have to define “nation”. There are many parts of Europe, particularly central and eastern Europe, where that is not necessarily co-terminous with “state”, even (or especially?) after the bloody struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The history of ethnic diversity across, particularly, the former territories of the Hapsburg and Romanov Empires is a major factor, and also the USSR deliberately settled large areas of the Baltic republics and what had been (ethnically diverse and disputed) eastern Poland, part of pre-war Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania with ethnic Russians.
So while the majority populations of the independent states in the area identify as that nationality, there are minorities that identify as Russian, and may or may not hanker for some sort of support and protection from the government of Russia, which is what the majority fears. I doubt if there’s any prospect of any government of the Baltic republics or the former “satellites” wanting a return of Russian hegemony.
The Ukrainian position is more complicated because it was for so long part of the Romanov Empire and then the Soviet Union, and its borders with Russia were administrative sub-divisions of an existing state (and moved around by central government fiat as recently as the 1960s). Moreover, Russian nationalists would say there isn’t a separate Ukrainian ethnicity or languagee ,and particularly not in the eastern part of the present state of Ukraine.
The one question mark might be Belarus (“White Russia”). There are people who claim it as a separate ethnicity and nation, but its government is close to Putin’s and is even more authoritarian. On the other hand, for that very reason, it’s not impossible that Lukashenko would want to hang on to independent control over the country, even if he wouldn’t necessarily want to strike an independent line in foreign policy: similar considerations might well apply in the “Stans” of central Asia, which all have their local “strong man” kleptocracies.
Ukraine was for quite a long time part of the Romanov Empire before the USSR, so its borders were essentially a matter of administrative sub-division (changed by central government fiat as recently as the 1960s). The independence movement of the civil war period before the USSR consolidated itself was largely in the west of the present state of Ukraine, and strong Russian nationalists would even deny there is a separate Ukrainian ethnicity and language.
So the recent troubles began again precisely because Ukraine was faced with the choice of economic agreements with the EU or Russia, and this became identified, inevitably, with the differences between politicians drawing their primary support from the western or eastern parts of the country. As for what ethnic Russians stand to gain, there is the question whether they are, or perceive themselves to be, treated as second-class citizens, whether the areas they live in get their fair share of public services, finance and investment, whether the economic interests of the industries that dominate their area are better served by EU market access and rules than those of Russia (e.g., Donbass coal), and whether local political bosses feel better able to preserve their fiefdoms, and all the benefits they derive from them, in an EU or Russia-oriented Ukraine.
Actually a lot of those people in eastern Ukraine were colonists from Russia. They speak Russian and they identify with Russia. There are several areas in former Russian provinces that were populated by Russian colonists after the native populations were decimated under the old Soviet Union.
Well, as I said, many of them are populated by Russians who identify with Russia. In addition, sure, there is a Russian trading federation (I can’t recall what it’s acronym is off hand and I’m not at a good place to Google, but it’s easy enough to look up) that is similar to the EU. Also, Russia offers things like loans, oil and natural gas and anti-air missile batteries as incentives, so there is that.
They haven’t had very good economic growth, as far as I recall, and have been in a recession since the price of oil dipped below $90/barrel…which is what they need to keep the lights on. Their economy is basically a one trick pony, and that trick has dropped in value a lot and doesn’t look to be recovering any time soon.
Belarus is the only one that springs to mind off the top of my head, though I know there were a few. They are the biggest one of the former Soviet Republics though that has gone in with Putin’s new Russian Empire.
As mentioned above, it was deliberate policy to plant some newly acquired territories with Russian settlers, like the English planted Ireland in the 16th & 17th c. In Estonia about a third of the population is ethnic Russian, or Ukrainian. The Estonians don’t like them much.
Talinn has Russian churches and Estonian churches, and the Estonian majority does not like the Russian minority - enough so that this gets into the guidebooks. The Occupation Museum in Talinn treats the Russians as worse than the Germans. I bet the Russian minority would welcome Russia coming back.
Yeah, there are a lot of descendants of Russian colonists around the old empire. Outside of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, I don’t know if they can really get a local majority going anywhere. They might be able to play the fifth column to bring back Russian occupation in some places, but the Russian Federation is already stretched pretty far.
Countries like Bulgaria and Greece that have grievances with the West and with the EU in particular might consider aligning to Russia useful at some point, but that’s a different matter.
In between the far-flung ethnic Russians and the countries that largely weren’t occupied by Russia, are all the nationalities that see the Russians as imperialists & occupiers–and don’t want to fall back in the Prison of Nations.
Tough talk by Russian chauvinists aside, Russian ability to expand is limited at the moment.
My understanding is that there is Ukraine, and then there is Ukraine. Samuel Huntington’s book “Clash of Civilisations etc.” identified Ukraine as a “civilizational fault line” (whatever his terminology was) because the east was “civilisationally” Russian, and the west was Western/European.
I’m personally fascinated by Kaliningrad, which is as I understand it ostensibly part of old Prussia, but which is reported by The Economist to be firmly (although perhaps not happily) Russian.
Yes, the territory around Königsberg it was firmly (hardly “ostensibly”) part of Prussia for centuries (Kant was born there), but was taken and renamed by the USSR as part of its westward expansion under the Yalta agreement of 1945. Those German residents who hadn’t already fled as the Red Army advanced were expelled, and replaced by Russian settlers.
Coincidentally I was recently watching a re-run of Michael Palin’s old travelogue series “New Europe”, as part of which he visited Kaliningrad. This would be before Putin’s conclusively authoritarian turn, and though his interview/guide was a bit cagey, she did say the geographical separation meant that residents were far more likely to have contacts with and experience of Poland and Lithuania than of “mainland” Russia. There certainly was a time in the early post-Soviet days when the residents protested vocally about the imposition of a local governor by Moscow, but since it’s a naval base and a symbolically important Russian presence, they’re not going to be allowed much room for manoeuvre by Moscow under any conceivable regime.
I would say Belarus is the most likely candidate if it’s ‘Russian hegemony’ (over them) and a ‘nation’ has to be relatively united in feeling that way. It’s in the interest of the ruling clique in Belarus to be basically Russia’s satellite yet retain some degree of the control and perks of ruling an independent country for themselves. The population’s deep interest in the latter part of that arrangement isn’t obvious.
Bulgaria is the most Russophile former Warsaw Pact country, but there could be serious resistance to a restoration of the degree of Russian hegemony of that time. Just as a practical economic matter I doubt most Bulgarians would accept being in Russia’s economic orbit and ousted from the EU, even if they grumble about the EU.
Otherwise it’s a matter of Russian speaking minorities in various countries which would welcome either dragging a Russophobe majority back under Russian domination or a Russian invasion of parts of the country where they are the majority, as has happened.
Their homegrown oligarchic/kleptocratic extreme nationalists might see Putin’s Russia as a possible protector and model, but the chances of their views getting much traction seem unlikely, since they are surrounded by EU members and candidate countries.
Everyone’s missing the obvious: The Eastern European nation that would most welcome a return of Russian hegemony is Russia. And given their relative power levels, they might be the only one who gets a say in the question.
Except that most of the former satellites are now in NATO. The signs are that Putin is OK with freezing the Ukraine situation as far as it has gone without (for the moment) pushing that issue any further, so it’s highly unlikely he’d be so stupid as to risk a confrontation with NATO by interfering with one of its members.
This. Trump has been doing his best to encourage Putin into a confrontation by signalling that a Trump presidency wouldn’t necessarily oppose Russian expansionism. But, even if Trump were to be elected, Putin is too canny to place any reliance on anything Trump has said.
No. But he is saying things which, if taken at face value, would encourage Russian expansionism and he is sufficiently clever to work out that they would tend to have that effect, if he thinks about it (which he probably doesn’t).
