Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

It was no surprise that very few Russian compatriots would take up the offer to move to the Far East or Siberia where Stalin had sent his deportees to the Gulag. In contrast to the initial plans to welcome 50,000–100,000 compatriots per year, in the peak year of 2011 only 32,500 compatriots arrived (a figure greater than in all the previous years combined).⁹³ For instance, from Estonia in the period 2007–9, the count was only 20 to 37 repatriated persons, despite Moscow’s consistent allegations that Estonia’s Russian minority suffers various discriminations.⁹⁴ The poor performance of this program can also be attributed to its much delayed launch (some fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union) and to the onset of the world financial crisis of 2008, affecting global labor markets.⁹⁵ It is also likely that by this time most compatriots who had wanted to emigrate to Russia had already done so. Looking back, it is reasonable to question to what extent Moscow was ever sincere in its resettlement efforts, and to what extent this was merely a show for the anniversary of the Great Patriotic War. If Moscow really intended to return some Russians to the motherland, this was only a small part of a multivector strategy toward its compatriots. Just two years later in the summer of 2008, Russian tanks would be moving into Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to protect local populations to whom Moscow had been dutifully offering passports in the preceding years.

Later in 2006, several programs targeting compatriots were launched, becoming long-term strategies focused on both supporting compatriots abroad and positioning them as a potential future resource. The programs also laid the groundwork for propaganda tools later used on Russian compatriots and for information warfare against Georgia, Ukraine, and beyond. The “Program for Working with Compatriots Abroad, 2006–2008” focused among other things on the provision of information support such as the creation and maintenance of websites, press publications, and TV and radio programs, collaboration with Russian-language mass media abroad.⁹⁶ Putin himself underlined the importance of the program at the World Congress of Russian Compatriots in 2006, boasting that financial resources devoted to compatriot issues that year were almost seven times greater than in 2000.⁹⁷

The “Program for Working with Compatriots Abroad” has been updated three times, but it has maintained the same strategic direction. The initial 2006–8 version emphasized the improvement of compatriot legislation in Russia, while the 2009–11 version concentrated more on assistance in organizing cultural events and on the promotion of Russian media. In comparison to previous versions, the program for 2012–14, released in 2011, featured new “assistance in consolidation of compatriots on [a] professional basis” and “assistance in [the] moral encouragement of compatriots including awarding ceremonies.”⁹⁸ This program also prioritized the increased role of the World Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots (established in 2006) and its country coordinating councils, as well as support for the print and internet resources of compatriot organizations.⁹⁹ The latest version of the program, for 2015–17, focuses more on the younger generation of compatriots and includes a new priority of “assistance in consolidation of youth compatriot organizations” such as summer schools, international sporting events, and competitions.¹⁰⁰ Over the past decade Russia has already engaged the Russian compatriot youth including organizing annual paramilitary camps.

Overall, unlike the efforts for repatriating the diaspora, the programs for compatriot information support have been seemingly successful. As the case studies will demonstrate, in 2014, nearly twenty-five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the diaspora tends to consume Russian TV, newspapers, online news portals, and social media quite heavily across the entire post-Soviet space. However, it is difficult to determine to what extent this appeal is due to the diaspora’s self-identification with Russia rather than with the significant advantages of scale and financing enjoyed by the Russian media versus the more limited media offerings of the smaller former Soviet republics.