Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

This politicized and securitized concept of “compatriot,” and certainly the notion of protecting one’s compatriots (rather than one’s citizens) who reside or are even citizens of foreign states is somewhat unusual in the global context, but not unprecedented. For instance, while Israel offers citizenship to Jews in general, it encourages them to return to the motherland rather than seeking to protect them abroad. Likewise, during the American invasion of Grenada in 1983, President Ronald Reagan argued that one of the motives of the operation was to protect American medical students on the island. Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and other countries have also pursued policies of support toward their diasporas. From the mid-1990s on, these countries offered benefits in various degrees in such areas as education, employment, and welfare not only to their compatriots, but also to passport holders, or in the short-lived case of Hungary, to identity card holders.⁹ Though these policies have attracted significant criticism on the grounds that they were intended to undermine the sovereignty of neighboring states, they have largely paled in comparison to the compatriot policies practiced by Russia.¹⁰ The sheer comprehensiveness, consistency, and tenacity of Russia’s compatriot policy place it in a league of its own. To be sure, I do not argue that any policy to support one’s compatriots is automatically illegitimate. Countries can call for other states to respect the human and civil rights of their conationals or other peoples. Diplomacy can be used to achieve such aims. Financing cultural and educational programs are also commonly used measures. But it is crucial to distinguish different forms that such policies can take—launching cultural television programs cannot be equated to sending in tanks. Using the pretext of compatriot protection to move in troops or refuse to withdraw them falls outside the scope of diplomatic or cultural initiatives. In some regards, Russia’s compatriot policies are more reminiscent of postcolonial policies, which suggest the imperial nature of the Soviet Union and the neo-imperial fallout from its collapse. For example, when India gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, Indians remained British subjects until 1950. Subsequently, some individuals who did not obtain Indian citizenship maintained a status of “British subject without citizenship.” However, unlike in the case of Russia, these categories were clearly and legally defined by mutual agreement between India and Britain.¹¹

In part the uniqueness of Russian compatriot policies in contemporary times stems from the scale of the issue and the nature of the Soviet empire, which had displaced, deported, and colonized sizable populations of different nations. Overnight with the fall of the USSR, Russia lost some 25 million ethnic Russians and additional Russian speakers to foreign states. These people had been citizens of the Soviet Union. Since Russia was the official successor state of the Soviet Union, accepting all of the Soviet Union’s former obligations, it made sense that Moscow would also take responsibility for the Soviet-era Russian migrants and deportees of all ethnicities to Soviet territories that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Central Asian steppes. The situation was complicated by the fact that some newly reestablished states like Estonia and Latvia failed to automatically provide citizenship to Soviet-era migrants, while interethnic conflict emerged in Georgia, and some Central Asian states like Uzbekistan embarked on nation-building that favored their titular majorities. As a result, some members of the Russian diaspora were left without any citizenship. The situation was made more complex by the fact that the Soviet-era Russian or Russian-speaking migrants were a highly diverse and fragmented group, many of whom had no desire to return to the motherland as they had developed strong ties to their countries of residence or had few ties to the Russian Federation. As this chapter will demonstrate, in the 1990s Russia was facing its own economic difficulties, and was not in a position to assist their return. Instead, Moscow cast them as compatriots.