Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

Despite the fact that neither the term “compatriot” nor “compatriot policy” was yet articulated, as early as in 1992 there were indications that compatriots were being used for Moscow’s foreign policy and particularly its military agenda. A good example could be the negotiation process to withdraw some 120,000 Soviet troops from the Baltic States (completed in Lithuania in 1993 and in Latvia and Estonia in 1994). During its negotiations with the Baltic capitals, the Russian side grounded its military presence in the Baltic States as a means of safeguarding the rights of compatriots in the region.⁴⁰ The withdrawal of the Russian troops was halted because in Yeltsin’s words in 1992, he was “profoundly concerned over numerous infringements of the rights of Russian speakers.”⁴¹ Later the same year Yeltsin also stressed that development of Russian-Baltic relations would “largely depend on the situation of the Russian-speaking population.”⁴² As will be shown in Chapter 5, the basis of Yeltsin’s concern was probably first of all the fact that two Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia, decided not to grant automatic citizenship to individuals (including many Russians) who had immigrated there during the Soviet era, but also Moscow’s lack of preparations to house the returning military and their families. Refusing to withdraw troops by citing excuses regarding compatriots was among the first signs of efforts to utilize the diaspora for Moscow’s aims and influence abroad. Similar statements linking Russia’s foreign policy toward a target country with the conditions of its Russian and Russian-speaking population were repeated over the next decades by Yeltsin’s successors in relation to a number of former Soviet republics.

In the context of rising tensions over Russian compatriots, Sergei Stankevich, historian and presidential counselor from 1992 to 1993, emerged as one of Russia’s early policymakers in this area. Together with the political opposition, Stankevich argued that Russians in the near abroad should be seen as an integral part of the Russian nation.⁴³ He was among the first to suggest that the Russian diaspora was not a potential problem, but on the contrary, a source of power in the former Soviet space.⁴⁴ Looking back, Stankevich seems a surprising figure to have become instrumental in conceptualizing the compatriot policies that would become a tool for Russia’s reimperialization efforts. A former perestroika and glasnost activist, the baby-faced former history teacher was still in his thirties when he became Yeltsin’s adviser. His fall from grace was as rapid as his rise—in 1996 he was charged with graft related to a $6 million blowout of public funds for a Red Square gala concert and retreated to live abroad.⁴⁵ But before his ousting, in 1993 Stankevich authored and presented to Yeltsin a report on the Russian diaspora entitled “On Urgent Measures for Socio-cultural Cooperation between Citizens of the Russian Federation with Their Compatriots Abroad.” It was the first official document addressing the compatriot issue and contains possibly the earliest formulation and usage of the term as it would come to be employed in the coming decades. The Stankevich report called for official measures to establish links between compatriots and the Russian state as well as public organizations to implement this task.⁴⁶

Table 1

Compatriot Policy Documents under Boris Yeltsin, 1993–1999