Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

In this book I will demonstrate how the reimperialization trajectory is employed in action through case studies of nearly all of the post-Soviet states. Countries will be grouped and analyzed not always by their geographic proximity but rather by where they fall on this trajectory. The analysis will group states like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova that have demonstrated the full spectrum of Russia’s reimperialization policies including de facto or de jure annexation of their territories. The Baltic States will be viewed together because with significant ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking populations they demonstrate the extent, limits, and risks of Russia’s compatriot policies in EU and NATO member states. The Central Asian states have demonstrated relative success in repelling Moscow’s measures including efforts at passportization of ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking minorities. The focus will be on Kazakhstan, which also faces the greatest risk of separatism and conflict due to its vast territories bordering Russia that are populated by a large Russian minority. Russia’s dependent allies, Belarus and Armenia, will be discussed together because they offer alternative lessons as the seemingly least likely sites of Russia’s aggression. Azerbaijan and a few of the Central Asian countries will be awarded less attention as they do not significantly add new insights on Moscow’s reimperialization efforts and in the latter cases, publicly available information is limited.

To offset the facts and figures of historical and contemporary realities of Moscow’s compatriot policies and the Russian diaspora, I will rely on the warmth of human voices of this largely misunderstood but highly politicized group of people. Each country study will present portraits of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers selected from nearly a hundred interviews. I have specifically reached out to younger Russians and Russophones born following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They represent the future generation of a population that Russia would like to claim as its compatriots and they will likely impact their countries’ relations with Moscow in the years to come. Russian speakers rather than solely ethnic Russians have been selected because in most of the analyzed countries, language, identity, ethnicity, and citizenship do not always go hand in hand. Furthermore, Russia often opportunistically counts among its compatriots those who are Russian-language speakers, whatever their relationship to these other categories, or simply those who have a cultural or spiritual connection with Russia or the Orthodox Church. Certainly this is no scientific survey, as I could not gather a representative sample from every ethnic, age, or socio-economic group. Likewise, only the voices of those who were willing to be interviewed will be heard here. In many (though not all) cases they represent a more Westernized, open, and perhaps bold group than their peers. Some, residing in remote corners of autocratic countries and frozen-conflict territories, were often too fearful to participate in my survey, or simply unreachable. The purpose of letting these voices be heard is thus, not to offer a scientific portrait of the Russian compatriot, but rather to humanize the issues at stake and to illustrate more vividly the complexity of the feelings within and across different people. Likewise, this is a story of countries, peoples, and issues that until recently have not received much attention from mainstream scholars and analysts. As such I have sought to tell this story as authentically as possible, supplementing my research of documents, policies, media reports, and academic studies with the insights of local experts and scholars. My approach is likewise driven by my goal of shedding light on the complex and multidimensional issues at stake in Moscow’s efforts to engage and co-opt its compatriots. Many of Russia’s policies follow the now widely accepted paradigm of “winning the hearts and minds”²³ of target peoples, albeit with a mix of coercion, information warfare, and the threat of military aggression. As the case studies will demonstrate, Moscow has outmatched the target countries in their own efforts to engage their Russian minorities. However, an effective response to Moscow’s policies in the form of counterengagement strategies can be launched only with a deeper understanding of these target “compatriot” populations. This book will offer insight into a group of people spread across Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic States, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere that Moscow has tried to claim but both their home countries and the West would also be wise to engage.

RUSSIAN “EMPIRE”: THE EVOLUTION OF A CONCEPT