While the recent renewal of friendly relations between Moscow and Washington, as well as the current rapprochement between President Dmitry Medvedev and the liberal Russian intelligentsia give reason for hope, the major source for instability in northern Eurasia remains in place.
A radically anti-Western and decidedly neo-imperialist faction of Moscow’s elite has gained a foothold in the Russian governmental apparatus, Putin’s United Russia Party. It is also prevalent in electronic as well as print media, (un)civil society and academia.
An array of more or less influential and, often, relatively young ultra-nationalists ranging from presidential administration officer Ivan Demidov to popular political commentator Mikhail Leontyev, as well as Moscow State University professor Alexander Dugin, have become part of everyday discourse in the post-Soviet world.
This factor gains relevance against the background of several unresolved issues in Moscow’s former empire, among them the future of the Black Sea section of Russia’s naval forces.
Currently, the port hosting the Russian Black Sea fleet is the city of Sevastopol, the largest city of the Crimean peninsula. Sevastopol gained world fame in the 19th century. It’s almost one-year long siege became the major episode of the 1853-56 Oriental or Crimean War between the Russian czarist empire, on the one side, and France, the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, on the other.
The Crimean War of the 1850s created, in Russia, a historical imagery of the Russians’ tenaci-ous defense of Sevastopol against Western invaders, and Moscow’s rightful claim to that city. The powerful military mythology around the czarist army’s heroic defense of the empire’s southern border may be exploited also in a contemporary conflict.
To escalate tensions at the Black Sea, explicitly expansionist policies by the Kremlin would not be necessary. A mere stirring up of emotions around the future of the Sevastopol naval base, the position of Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority vis-à-vis the Ukrainian state or the rights of the Tatar minority within the Crimean Autonomous Republic, could be sufficient to spill first blood.
The following sequence of political reactions, social mobilization and mutual accusations, by Kyiv and Moscow, would bring Europe’s two largest countries quickly to the brink of an armed confrontation.
Most of Crimea’s inhabitants are, unlike South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s populations, ethnic Russians who seem to be actively acquiring Russian Federation passports. Should the Russian Federation come to believe that the hundreds of thousands of ethnically Russian inhabitants of Crimea are under some sort of threat, the Kremlin may feel forced to “protect the compatriots.”
The Kremlin’s decision-makers may even understand that the chances, on the Black Sea peninsula, of a full military victory are, unlike in South Ossetia, slim. Yet, public outrage whipped up hate speech from the likes of Leontyev or Dugin would force even moderate Russian politicians to prove their “patriotism,” and “take a principled position.”
An encouragement of anti-Ukrainian and separatist forces in Crimea could be seen by the extreme right as a strategy to undermine Russian-Western rapprochement.
A resulting Russian-Ukrainian war would be devastating for the relations of the two closely related nations, and disastrous for European security. However, it would also discipline President Dmitry Medvedev in the way in which the Russian-Georgian War held back – at least, for some time – the new President’s domestic and foreign initiatives.
Another irredentist war would transform Russia into something like a fortress with an even more rigid internal regime and less international cooperation than today.
It would again postpone or put an end to the Medvedev circle’s attempts to re-democratize Russia. Moscow’s revanchists may calculate that the political repercussions of an escalation of tensions on Crimea will strengthen their position in Russia. Should they get a chance to manipulate the politics of the Black Sea peninsula, a second Crimean War could become reality.
Andreas Umland is general editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html). This article was first published by Russia Profile.
