It has been suggested that Aksyonov’s novel prеdicts the
Russian takeover of Crimea last year. I see it differently. It certainly is a
prophetic novel, but it predicts instead an experiment with democracy and
freedom which began with Mikheil Gorbachev’s perestroyka after 1985 and ended in 2003
with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Just like the Island of Crimea, that
experiment has been snuffed out and, just like Aksyonov’s Crimea, it was
destroyed by the voluntary acceptance of “sovok” – the Soviet rule and the
Soviet worldview.
It is a novel about failure – the failure, above all, of the
Soviet Union, and now of Russia to find a way to live in modern reality. It is
uncanny that Aksyonov chose Crimea as a geographical venue for a failed Russian
experiment at democracy. Because through the centuries Crimea has been a symbol
of Russia’s failures even more consistently than of its military glory.
The Russians and the Ottoman Turks fought numerous wars for two
centuries before the Crimean Khanate was incorporated into the Russian Empire
in 1783. However, Crimea was not an end in itself but a beachhead for Russia’s
further southward advance at the expense of Turkey. Three more wars followed
until the middle of the 19th century, with Russia acquiring territories on the
eastern and western shores of the Black Sea.
But the prize St. Petersburg always coveted was bigger: the
Turkish Straits and control over Istanbul, or Tsargrad in Russian. There was a
host of reasons why it was so important, strategic as well as ideological.
Naturally, control over the Straits would mean unhindered access to the
Mediterranean and would reshape Russia into a major European power.
But the ideological aspect of controlling Constantinople was
even more important. It would fulfill Russia’s manifest destiny of becoming the
Third Rome, not only making it a direct heir to historic Byzantium but also
bringing Eastern Christianity under its full control.. Accordingly, Russia
traditionally positioned itself as a protector of both Slavs and Orthodox
Christians living under the Turkish rule. The pan-Slav movement also had
far-reaching plans of uniting all Slavs in one state – the Russian one, of
course.
The Russian expansion was stopped by the combined Ottoman,
British, French and Piedmontese forces fighting the Crimean War. Russia was
briefly banned from having a navy in the Black Sea, but it was back in action
just twenty years later. In 1877-78, it came close to winning the big prize as
Russian troops crossed the Balkans and got to the gates of Istanbul. The
Ottomans were forced to conclude the Treaty of San Stefano, giving a newly
formed state, Bulgaria, control over today’s European Turkey. But again Russia
was frustrated – this time by an alliance led by another new European power, Germany. After that war, many
people in Russia felt that their country was robbed of the fruits of its
victory.
Russia returned to the region with a vengeance after its defeat
in the war against Japan in 1905. World War I had lots of causes, but Russia’s
designs on the Straits figured prominently among them. A recent book by
historian Sean McMeekin The Russian
Origins of the First World War reminds us that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was
assassinated by an organization controlled and financed by Russia’s ally
Serbia, and that Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the head of Serbian army intelligence,
had been working closely with the Russians. While there was still hope for a
diplomatic solution in the ensuing impasse, Russia secretly started to mobilize,
precipitating the war. It was clearly spoiling for a fight.
The first genocide in history – the brutal murder of millions
of Armenians (and many Greeks) by the Turks during World War I – was the
reflection of Russia’s plans to conquer most of Turkey. The Christian subjects
of the Ottoman Empire were murdered en masse on the excuse that they could go
over to the enemy.
This time, there was no doubt that Russia would get the Straits
and Tsargrad after the Central Powers’ imminent defeat. There was no one to
oppose Russia’s ambitions this time, and even after the February Revolution got
rid of Nicholas II, the Provisional Government was planning to mount an
offensive into Turkey and Persia. And yet, the prize was snatched from Russia
once more, at the last moment – this time by the Bolsheviks. The fall of
Crimea, the last major bastion of the White movement, marked the end of the Russian Civil War,
announced the final victory of the Bolsheviks and put paid on Russia’s dream of
ever controlling the Straits.
It was highly symbolic that battle-hardened Russian military
officers, who came very close to marching as victors into Tsargrad, arrived as
defeated refugees to Allied-occupied Constantinople in November 1920.
With Vladimir Putin’s rash annexation, Crimea threatens to
remain a symbol of Russia’s failures. It has already set in motion events over
which the Kremlin is promptly losing control. The logic of the annexation and
the need for a land link to the peninsula pulled Russia into Eastern Ukraine, where
it hoped to foment rebellions on a mostly Russian-speaking territory Putin
termed Novorossiya. The result has been a military calamity and a political
disaster. Imagining that the path to extricate himself from his Donbas
misadventure lies through Damascus and an alliance with Washington in Syria,
Putin got Russia into another potential quagmire.
It’s history repeating itself as farce that the moment Russia
took over Crimea, it almost automatically found itself being pulled into a
southward expansion and, quite possibly, a religious war, as some sycophants in
Putin’s entourage have already declared that Russia’s move into Syria was a
“holy war” and a way to save Syria’s embattled Christian minority.
I
