Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

Crimea’s history is distinct from Ukraine’s. The peninsula was ruled by the Golden Horde and then formed part of the Crimean Khanate from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The Russian Empire annexed Crimea in 1783, which resulted in the emigration and deportation of the local populations of Crimean Tatars and Greeks, while the peninsula was colonized mainly by Russians.²⁵ In 1944, on the night of 18 May Stalin deported the remaining Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan, other Central Asian republics, and Siberia.²⁶ Herded to railway stations and packed into cattle cars, many of the Tatars died during the journey, while starvation and disease also took their toll in the resettlement camps.²⁷ As noted by Lilia Muslimova, aide to the Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Jemilev, “this tragic event resulted in the deaths of 46% of the Crimean Tatar population and achieved what many historians consider to be the Russian desired final solution—a Crimea without Crimean Tatars.”²⁸ The most recent transparent population census, that of 2001, in Crimea showed that 58.5 percent called themselves Russians, 24.4 percent identified as Ukrainians, and 12.1 percent called themselves Crimean Tatars, with other ethnic groups making up the remainder.²⁹ Muslimova adds that “in the twenty-first century Crimean Tatars are once again struggling for their dignity and homeland because of the Crimea’s brutal and illegal occupation by the Russian Federation.”³⁰

PORTRAITS OF RUSSIAN SPEAKERS

To illustrate the complexity of views and sentiments of contemporary Russian speakers and “compatriots” of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, this section will draw on interviews with Russian speakers to offer readers the voices and portraits of people that facts and figures cannot provide. There is an important distinction between Russian speakers residing in separatist territories like Transnistria and those in Moldova and Georgia proper. Russian speakers in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have been more thoroughly Russified and have increasingly grown loyal to Moscow over the past two decades. Russian speakers in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine proper are more integrated into their states and are more likely to perceive themselves as Moldovan, Georgian, and Ukrainian. These observations were indirectly confirmed in an internet survey conducted in September 2014 by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation, in which they tried to learn the attitude of two traditionally pro-Russian regions in Ukraine, Odessa and Kharkov, toward separatism and Russian involvement in Ukraine. While this survey demonstrated people’s skeptical position toward the Kiev government (with 26 percent describing their attitude as “negative,” 25 percent as “neutral,” and only 11 percent as “positive”), it also revealed other sociological trends such as 34 percent support for the statement that “the Ukrainian future should be with Europe” (compared with 17 percent for Russia), a 50 percent “negative” attitude toward Putin (with only 12 percent “positive”), and most importantly, 87 percent of support for the statement “I’d like to see my region as part of Ukraine,” as against only 3 percent expressing a preference for becoming “part of Russia,” and 2 percent in favor of “a part of Novorossiya”).³¹ As I noted in the introduction, the following interviews should not be construed as a scientific survey, as it was not possible to gather a representative sample of every age and social group, especially considering the ongoing war in Ukraine and the frozen conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. Instead, these interviews offer a glimpse into the views of mostly young Russian speakers in late 2014. The focus on the younger generation, born after the fall of the Soviet Union, is due to the fact that they represent the future of Russian compatriots in their countries. This generation may play a significant role in how their countries respond to the reimperialization policy.