Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

This shift has several consequences. On one hand, it marks an effort to conceptualize compatriots as active rather than passive members of the Russian World. On the other hand, the conditionality of activism likely narrows the ranks of compatriots. As political scientist Oxana Shevel outlines, the 2010 amendment once again enables Moscow to define all former Soviet citizens as compatriots, but does not legally require Moscow to do so.¹¹⁶ Furthermore, the concept of self-identification reduced the scope of the paradoxical situation created in 1999 where some 150 million former Soviet citizens could be considered compatriots under the law, including (in the wording of the amendment) “residents of Finland and Poland because these countries at some point were within the territory of the Russian state, and Mikheil Saakashvili and elites of the Baltic States because they are from the former USSR.”¹¹⁷ Certainly, Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili who had just fought a war against Russia could not be counted among Russian compatriots though he had previously held Soviet citizenship. On the other hand, Georgia’s South Ossetians and Abkhazians could still be included presumably because they had historically resided in the Russian Empire and because many had acquired Russian citizenship.¹¹⁸

At the same time, various initiatives to support compatriots continued. In the spring of 2011, Medvedev established a Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, which aims “to provide Russians abroad with the necessary support to protect their lawful rights and interests in their countries of residence.”¹¹⁹ Also that year the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a website, ruvek.ru—a self-described portal for Russian compatriots—to assist their voluntary resettlement to Russia.¹²⁰

A momentous shift in Russian foreign policy vis-à-vis compatriots occurred after Putin returned to the presidency. In May 2012, he signed a decree “On Measures for Implementation of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.” This document had one strategic difference from “Russia’s National Security Strategy to 2020” of 2009 and the earlier “Russian Foreign Policy Concept” and the “National Security Concept,” both of 2000 that presaged changes in compatriot policy: for the first time, it explicitly set out to protect Russian compatriots in addition to Russian citizens. It instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and other executive agencies “to ensure the full protection of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of Russian citizens and compatriots living abroad.”¹²¹ Thus the document called for an increase in budget financing for relevant projects, to be implemented through the Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad and the older Government Commission for the Affairs of Compatriots Living Abroad established in 1994.¹²² This commission, chaired by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, aimed to coordinate the work of Russian federal and regional executive bodies in pursuing and implementing state policy toward “Russians residing abroad”—terminology that again seems to equate Russian compatriots and Russians in general.¹²³ In the same year, during the Fourth World Congress of Compatriots, Putin stated that documents regarding Russian compatriot policy were no longer vague, as “support for the Russian diaspora is one of the most important policies of our state.”¹²⁴

In February 2013 the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a new “Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation,” which further reiterated the notion of protecting both Russian citizens and compatriots. Among its goals, the concept aimed to ensure “comprehensive protection of rights and legitimate interests of Russian citizens and compatriots residing abroad” through the mechanisms of international law and treaties. It also supported “consolidation of organizations of compatriots to enable them to effectively uphold their rights in the countries of residence while preserving the cultural and ethnic identity of the Russian diaspora and its ties with the historical homeland.”¹²⁵ As the next chapter will show, this concept of equating compatriots and citizens was demonstrated in 2014 in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, although Moscow’s policies of protection there did not employ international laws and treaties but rather opted for annexation and military means.