Mikhail Deliagin. Russian Politics & Law. Volume 53, Issue 2, 2015.
The author examines the role of Crimea in the Russian state, beginning with a justification of the legality of the region’s annexation as both a reflection of the historical connection between Crimea and Russia and the result of the illegitimacy of the post-coup government in Ukraine. He then turns to the potential role of the integration of Crimea as a national project that could revive Russia while allowing its leaders to root out traitors and other undesirables from among the Russian elites.
The legality of Crimea’s reunification with Russia
Crimea has belonged to Russia since the eighteenth century. It has been settled and developed mainly by Russians, and even the Ukrainians who live there by and large perceive themselves as people of Russian culture.
Even at the level of daily life there is a strong sense of Crimea’s connection to Russia. To the amazement of local excursion guides, the history of Crimea (a considerable part of which pertains to the Tatar period) and excursions (even into the scorching heat) are of interest almost exclusively to tourists from Russia. Ukrainian tourists mostly just laid on the beaches. And this shows that the Ukrainian nation, close to us as it may be, never did come to feel that Crimea was its own.
The Ukrainian state has done hardly anything to develop Crimea—just as Bulgaria does not develop the southernmost section of its coastal strip (beyond Sinemorets), which once belonged to Turkey, the unofficial reason being that “perhaps we shall have to give it back.” In the same way, Poles resettled in the formerly German areas of Silesia still do not take up residence in the sturdy houses abandoned by Germans because “the owners may come back.”
It is not only Crimea that has never considered itself Ukrainian. “Independent” Ukraine too has never considered Crimea its own, and it was to a great extent against its will that the Russian leadership in 2014 was compelled to show respect for these almost coinciding positions.
Another reason for the attitude of the Ukrainian authorities toward Crimea may be that in purely legal terms Khrushchev’s transfer of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, albeit within the framework of a single state, was not only a manifestation of “voluntarism” but also directly violated—indeed, did not even violate but simply ignored—all the existing legal norms. Legally, therefore, this transfer was, alas, null and void—and only our legal nihilism has enabled us to overlook this for sixty years.
The Crimean Tatars officially constitute 12 percent of the population, or according to their own representatives 14 percent (and a significant proportion of “Crimean Tatars” are actually Meskhetian Turks or members of other Central Asian ethnic groups who fled ethnic cleansing and were “appropriated” by leaders of the Crimean Tatars in order to increase their numbers and thereby their representation). Despite the official boycott declared by their leaders and quite outrageous propaganda (in just two weeks most Crimean Tatars received several leaflets claiming that the Russians were planning to send them to Northern Kazakhstan and that [Nursultan] Nazarbayev had already agreed to the plan), almost half of the Crimean Tatars participated in the referendum. Sociological surveys have shown that the majority of socialized Crimean Tatars—that is, those who work and earn money outside the confines of their own clan and local community—are in favor of reunification with Russia because these people want to live by the norms of the modern world and not by those of the vanquished Middle Ages.
Crimea is inhabited by ethnic Russians and is part of Russia: this is also clear from people’s attitudes. Support for reunification is qualitatively stronger there even than in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv (where at the time of the referendum it was estimated at 55–60 percent). Residents of Odessa have a specific outlook of their own: although twice as many of them support Russia rather than Ukraine (22 percent as compared to 11 percent), two-thirds of them want a “free city”—that is, a customs-free zone formally belonging to someone but in reality subordinate to no one. In Kherson oblast, which is directly adjacent to Crimea and has strategic significance for its water and electricity supply as well as transportation, about 40 percent of the inhabitants favor reunification with Russia.
The Crimean referendum is completely legitimate even from a formal point of view, because the Ukrainian state has ceased to exist—despite the pretensions of the Nazis who have seized power in Kyiv in a coup d’état with the support and direct guidance of the United States and the European Union (EU). Real power belongs to the oligarchs who financed the Euromaidan—they have taken charge of industries and security forces “for milking”—and to the Nazi fighters in their pay. Scientologists like Yatsenyuk and Baptist preachers like [Oleksandr] Turchynov convey the impression of being no more than puppets playing the role of a temporary cover and a “showcase of the young Ukrainian democracy” formally acceptable to the West. They have no real power because they have no armed formations of their own, and all they can do is promise to sell Ukraine’s remaining assets—the gas transportation system, the most fertile agricultural land, sea- and river ports, coal mines—at a knockdown rate to Western “strategic investors” and to their own bosses among the oligarchs.
The Supreme Rada was legitimate, but only before it began its work, trampled the constitution underfoot, and destroyed the sole body that might have justified this action “in the light of extraordinary circumstances”—the Constitutional Court. Thereby the Supreme Rada destroyed not only itself but also the Ukrainian state that emerged in 1991. (President Yanukovych, while retaining formal legitimacy, ceased to be an element of statehood—not when he fled the country but later, when—unlike de Gaulle—he renounced the option of reconstituting the state on the basis of his own apparatus.)
And in the absence of a central unitary state—even a hypothetical or potential state, let alone a real one—each region and each large community of citizens has the right to establish its own state. However, even if this were not the case—even if there were a quite legitimate and fully fledged state in Kyiv rather than a gang of Nazis supported by the European Union (hence the term “Euro-Nazis”)—that would not change the situation. For the principle of territorial integrity prevails over the right of nations to self-determination only if the state fulfills a necessary minimum of its direct and inalienable obligations to the members of these nations.
In Ukraine today pensions are not being paid, travelers on the roads have to pay tribute at do-it-yourself checkpoints (e.g., as in Afghanistan in the interval between the Najibullah and the Taliban regimes) or simply to bandits, Euro-Nazi punitive expeditions terrorize even cities of a million inhabitants or more, and the country is inexorably descending not just into crisis but into disorder of the kind that reigned during the Civil War. There can therefore be no question of the authorities fulfilling their obligations to the population, and thus according to international law the principle of self-determination decisively prevails over the idea of territorial integrity. However, even if a state did exist in Ukraine and even if it provided conditions for a normal life, the precedent of Kosovo—a precedent established by the West—quite clearly and convincingly proves that ethnic groups still have the right to seek independent statehood.
It should also be recalled that in 1991, Ukraine left the Soviet Union immediately after a specially conducted referendum at which an absolute majority of its population voted quite categorically in favor of Ukraine remaining “within the Soviet Union,” albeit as an independent republic. Thus Ukraine seceded in direct defiance of the popular will as registered in the referendum result, merely on the basis of a “declaration of independence”—and without expecting any reaction, even of a purely formal kind, from the central Soviet authorities that still existed. When in 2014 Crimea made the decision to exercise self-determination, it acted in considerably greater compliance with legal norms than Ukraine had in 1991—strictly speaking, in full compliance with all conceivable and inconceivable norms, or at least in conformity with and not in defiance of the referendum result.
The legal possibility of a state joining another state, even against the will of the Western countries (usually masquerading as “the will of the whole world community”), was demonstrated by the German Democratic Republic, which—as President Putin rightly reminded us—joined the Federal Republic of Germany in defiance of the will of the whole West, with the sole support of Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. The behavior of Angela Merkel, however, shows that this was a mistake. Thus the reunification of Crimea with Russia is not only absolutely natural but also perfectly lawful and legitimate even from the most formal point of view.
Russia has started its reunification—not even in full awareness of doing so and despite the interests of the ruling bureaucratic circle, which acts largely under the pressure of chance circumstances. But the implacable iron will of the peoples forges its own way forward, and we must acknowledge that however timid, partial, and half-hearted the first step may have been, it has been taken. Russia has begun to return to the history of mankind, to real and serious world politics—and this comes as a shock to all those whose expectations have been molded by a quarter century of national betrayal.
An authentic “national project”
The “world community” has made it clear to us with the utmost sincerity that it will always regard Russia as guilty. And even if we vanish from the face of the earth it will still regard us as guilty for having once existed. So it is not worth paying attention to this bunch of liars and provocateurs who recognize the right of a nation to rise up in arms should that be in their own interests but not its right to express its will in a peaceful and civilized referendum if that threatens their interests. As President Putin has rightly pointed out, neither laws nor obligations exist for the West—the only thing that the West cares about is its own interest. And the only thing that the West understands is force. “Soft” force or “hard” force—that depends on circumstances. And unless we want to become corpses, victims of bombing raids, helpless and tormented refugees, or at best zombies like Yanukovych, it makes sense to talk with the West only in the one language that it understands and in which it shows an interest—the language of force.
The next stage in the necessary demonstration of force is now the revival of Crimea. Just look: reunification with Crimea has restored unity between the authorities and the people—a unity that seemed permanently broken. After the waste and corruption of the 2014 Winter Olympics were exposed, the well-known television host Igor Vittel exclaimed: “Steal some more money from me so that I should stand yet again and sing my country’s national anthem!”—but in that situation it was precisely a matter of “yet again.” Russian society understood very well that the holiday would pass but life would remain the same. Now, by contrast, after reunification with Crimea, the Russian nation has experienced a feeling that it appeared to have forgotten forever—the feeling of pride in one’s country. As Suvorov wrote at the time of his triumph: “We are Russians! What a delight!”
And now we must develop and deepen this feeling of pride, so that it should not turn into the feeling of shame to which Russians have become accustomed over a quarter century of national betrayal. We must justify the trust of the Russians, Ukrainians, and Tatars of Crimea who believed in us despite the intense propaganda of their diasporas. And we must win over those who did not believe in us. This is the authentic “national project” that has united the authorities and the people in a national community that excludes only liberal renegades: at the level of daily life they have excluded themselves from the nation—and now we must exclude them from state affairs.
The integration of Crimea encompasses three sets of tasks: solving the most acute current problems of life support; unifying the normative-legal field; and achieving strategic goals. The first set of tasks can be accomplished within a year, or a year and a half at most, but their specificity and complexity demand the creation for this period of a special administrative body with special powers; at present the ideal organizational form seems to be a state committee under the president of Russia. In day-to-day work it should be a government department, but a special department directly subordinate to the president, because there are still defense and foreign policy problems connected with Crimea, and the Euro-Nazis have not renounced sabotage, subversion, or terrorism.
Rumors concerning the appointment of deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak as “Crimea supremo” give grounds for hope (although the prolonged delay in making an administrative decision regarding the development of Crimea is worrying). In the first half of the 2000s Kozak demonstrated shortcomings in the legal field: he showed hardly any understanding of the difference between written law and the practice of law enforcement, leading to destructive judicial and administrative reforms, “demarcation of powers between levels of government,” and certain other initiatives with similar sorry results. However, his work in the Northern Caucasus and his preparations for the Olympics indubitably broadened his horizons and strengthened his practical work skills—otherwise he could not have achieved, for instance, such an unlikely success in Sochi.
Kozak has an unblemished reputation—a great rarity nowadays among leaders at his level (and not only in Russia but also in other European countries)—and a good practical acumen. So sending him to Crimea would be absolutely justified, although it would entail a definite loss for the rest of Russia. He is undoubtedly capable of organizing lasting and constructive interaction with the “polite military men” (who, insofar as can be judged, were residents of Crimea who served near their homes in both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces) as well as with the Crimean Tatar diaspora.
Among the immediate problems of which not everyone in Russia is yet fully aware, the most important one seems to be the problem of water. Before the Soviet period there was hardly any water in Crimea: we all remember Pushkin’s verse The Fountain of Bakhchisarai [1823], but it must be understood that its “poetical tears” are tears in the literal sense of the word. All the luxury that the ruler of Crimea, who set Moscow on fire more than once, could allow himself was a “fountain” from which water trickled out drop by drop. Most of Crimea had no water. At present Crimea draws water from the Dnieper River, and not only official closure of the canal but also the arrival of a group of ordinary Nazi saboteurs from Kyiv could leave the 2,700,000 inhabitants of Crimea practically without water.
It has to be understood that this is not the first time that Nazis have committed—or at least tried to commit—genocide, and the world community and a German chancellor who considers it normal for herself to be elected three times in a row simply because her surname is not Putin will wholeheartedly support the Nazis in this enterprise, or at least raise no objections—in accordance, inter alia, with the historical tradition of their states. Historical experience teaches us that most people who place their reliance on the normality of Nazis end up as corpses or refugees.
On account of its importance and obviousness, however, this problem—insofar as can be judged from the information in a number of competent sources—has in principle been solved. If agreement cannot be reached on placing key installations of the canal outside Crimea under guard, perhaps on an informal or joint basis, then full-scale preparations have been made for the rapid laying of a strategic water pipeline across the seabed of the Kerch Strait [from Russia’s Krasnodar krai], like the pipeline that supplies Cyprus [the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus—Trans.] with water from Turkey.
One important point is that the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol has desalination installations with sufficient capacity to supply water to the city and its outskirts in accordance with Soviet norms. And—a pleasant surprise for everyone acquainted with the record of [former defense minister] Anatoly Serdiukov—these installations are in place and in good working order. The capacity to supply the rest of Crimea with water, at least in accordance with emergency norms, until such time as the strategic water pipeline comes on line is available, even taking into account the flow of vacationers. The emergency norms are quite adequate for normal life; unfortunately, however, it will be necessary to forget about agriculture under these circumstances.
The second very acute problem facing the peninsula is electricity: Crimea’s own power plants cover only 20 percent of peak consumption. An energy bridge with Russia is essential, and intensive work is under way in this area. Crimea has deposits of oil and gas that it supplies to Ukraine by pipeline—but even in order to burn gas in a thermal power plant it is not enough to build the plant: significant capacities are needed to “prepare” (dry and clean) the gas, and these remain wholly in Ukraine. So it is not just expensive but simply impossible for Crimea to rapidly create its own electric power industry.
Against this background, transportation—Crimea’s third most important problem—receives less attention. However, by the middle of March, due to the blockade organized by the Euro-Nazis, deliveries of food products from Ukraine had already been sharply reduced, leading to a 15–20 percent increase in their prices (which most residents of Crimea philosophically attributed to the 30 percent devaluation of the Ukrainian hryvnia). Work is currently under way to establish a proper ferry service connecting Kerch with Russia’s [Black Sea] ports as far as Novorossiisk. Insofar as can be judged, the vessels for this have been not only assigned but also placed where they are needed. They do not suffice to sustain the flow of tourists but are quite adequate to the requirements of supplying the peninsula. Equipment for loading and unloading is being installed; logistical and commercial arrangements for the organization of deliveries are being made.
But the most important of the current problems lies ahead—the tourist season. In 2013 Crimea received 6 million vacationers—a record for the post-Soviet period. Over half of them were Ukrainians, most of whom will no longer come—not only on account of the blockade and the threat of criminal prosecution by the Nazi junta but also due to deep poverty and the collapse of transportation. Taking a rest cure is not likely to be a high priority for people struggling to cope with disorder, banditry, and terror. Instead of tourists, refugees will come from Ukraine: most of them will continue to head for Russia, but some will prefer Crimea because it is more familiar and warmer (and the majority of refugees will go to relatives, wherever they may live). However, refugees seek to earn money; few have money to spend. It is therefore necessary to attract tourists from Russia, even though our tourists, with the exception of patriotically inclined young people, are also afraid to go (the possibility of Nazi acts of terror scares them away).
So in addition to antiterrorist work (in which a significant number even of Crimean Tatars will willingly participate in order to earn a livelihood by serving vacationers), a serious package of measures is needed to organize recuperative and educational tourism. Some of the things that can be done are obvious. For instance, following a series of operations by foreign intelligence services, personnel of the Federal Security Service (FSB) have for a long time not been allowed to take their vacations abroad, except in Belarus. Belarus has beautiful landscape and excellent spas but it has no warm seashore, whereas Russia’s Black Sea coast is too expensive and can receive only a limited number of vacationers. Now personnel of the Russian special services will be able to take organized vacations by the sea in Crimea.
It is necessary to make similar arrangements for conscientious employees of other law enforcement agencies: if this is centrally organized, people will go willingly because they will be able to save a lot of money by traveling at discounted group rates and minimizing the profit margins of tourism firms. The same goes for students and for workers in residential and municipal services and in enterprises connected with the state. It is highly characteristic that at a meeting with representatives of big business held at the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs immediately after reunification with Crimea, Putin asked them not so much to invest in Crimea as to send their employees there on vacation.
A very serious problem in developing recuperative tourism in Crimea is the complete decentralization of the sphere of tourist services. Such services are provided not by large or even small entrepreneurs but by ordinary people. They will not be able to organize themselves even for the purpose of placing a simple advertisement or transferring a considerable number of new arrivals from the airport—and probably they will be unable even to formulate tasks in such terms. Therefore, they have to be organized right now—without any compulsion, of course. Excellent experience in this respect has been accumulated not only in the Baltic states but also in neighboring Krasnodar krai: an adequately organized and accurate information base will suffice initially and can be set up by local students.
It is fundamentally important that in addition to classical beach vacations Crimea should be in a position to receive the enormous flow of people interested in recuperative and educational tourism. And phenomena like the Kazantip [a cape in northeastern Crimea] dance festival (which, incidentally, was organized and is regularly held and inventively expanded by Russian citizens) deserve all possible assistance, even if they do not fully correspond to the ideas of certain bureaucrats about aesthetic standards or sanitary norms. Use of these and many other hidden resources will enable us to appreciably expand the flow of tourists, especially in view of the deterioration of the situation in Egypt and the excessive cost of vacations on Russia’s Black Sea coast—if, of course, this flow can be organized and digested.
Tourists will not be able to reach Crimea by passing through Ukraine, which is turning into Huliaipole before our eyes—and, indeed, the blockade of Crimea will prevent them from doing so. Airport facilities must therefore be modernized as quickly as possible: the very long runway at Simferopol constructed for Buran aircraft is insufficient by itself. It will probably be necessary to restore at least some of the abandoned military airfields, install appropriate equipment, and use them to receive tourist charter flights. Of course, this will bring joy neither to the military businessmen [khoziaistvennye voennye] who happily enter into possession of these airfields nor to the pilots of civil aviation who will have to work under unfamiliar and uncomfortable conditions.
In addition, the government must concentrate its efforts on organizing the cheapest possible tourist flights to Crimea. A decisive end must be put to the practice of extortion of subsidies from the state budget by the big airlines. Historically most tourists have gone to Crimea under their own steam [i.e., not in organized tour groups—Trans.]. In order to redirect this flow across the Kerch Strait it will be necessary to deploy military pontoon bridges for at least twenty lanes of traffic (they will have to be removed at night to open the strait for shipping); this must be done immediately after the spring storms have ended—that is, at the end of April or at the latest at the beginning of May. At the same time, it will be necessary to expand the road network of the Kerch Peninsula—and then of Crimea as a whole—and that of the Russian side. This is because in summer the Don federal highway has usually been overloaded even with transit to Crimea through Ukraine; now the load on it will be much heavier still. Special efforts are probably needed to improve the flow of traffic along it.
It must be understood with merciless clarity: if instead of 6 million tourists Crimea receives only 2 million this season, then a large proportion of those engaged in the “private sector” will have to be given social assistance. Formally they have no employment; in reality they earn a living by serving vacationers. Without enough vacationers, people will have to be given assistance, even if they are self-employed or small businesspeople. And then the Russian state will exceed, albeit not by a critical margin, the current level of assistance to Crimea, estimated at 90 billion rubles a year.
True, the very fact of reunification has already brought Russia substantial savings: it no longer has to pay rent on the base of the Black Sea Fleet. And let it be noted that even when these funds did not remain in Sevastopol, thanks to our fleet it was the most prosperous city in Ukraine (that is why [Yulia] Tymoshenko, when she was prime minister, agreed—despite her own political hysterics—to extend the lease on the base). Issues pertaining to the unification of norms, procedures, and standards are already being resolved in practice. But if the European system of accounting in Crimea is replaced by ours, in which tax accounts and bookkeeping accounts are kept in parallel and require dual outlays, that will be a mistake.
Another underestimated problem that may cause no end of trouble is the extremely weak and confused nature of the Ukrainian system for registering citizens’ land rights. Specification of plots “from this acacia tree to that ditch,” registration of property in the form of an entry in a book kept in the garage of the chairman of the gardening cooperative, unregistered deals “by gentlemen’s agreement”—all this is just the tip of the iceberg that is visible even from Moscow. And yet the land along the southern shore of Crimea is priceless, and there are serious fears that raiders from Russia have already established themselves there, while local criminals have begun to “wring” land out of local residents in order to sell it to people from Russia as the lawful owners. It is essential to take these “enthusiasts” firmly in hand in order to prevent the plunder of the population.
The cost of reviving Crimea is insignificant for Russia
According to available estimates, social service provision and infrastructural projects in Crimea will initially require 90 billion rubles a year—possibly even somewhat more. It is, however, extremely important that this will not be a permanent burden but an investment to “jump-start” the Crimean economy, after which it should not just be self-sustaining but generate net revenue for Russia. However, the chief point is that this sum, though mind-boggling by comparison with our wages, is quite insignificant relative to total state expenditure. For example, it is less than one-fifteenth of expenditure on the Sochi Olympics, which—whatever people may say—had no palpable effect on the state budget.
Russia is able to finance Crimea—and much else besides—without any reduction in the regular expenditures envisioned in the “pre-Crimea” budget. We have enough money to invest in Crimea without detriment to our servicemen and others dependent on state funding, who can now hardly be called deprived, or to the genuinely deprived strata of Russia’s citizens. Of course, the liberal gangsters, who in recent weeks have again shown their bestial fangs by systematically supporting Nazism, may use reunification with Crimea for purposes of sabotage, for the fiscal-financial suffocation of Russia—just as they use the “May decrees” of President Putin. But in my view this pertains to the problem of the criminal elements in the current Russian leadership and has nothing to do with Crimea as such.
What is more, the ostentatious séance of self-exposure that the Russian liberal clique has again conducted in connection with the Ukrainian crisis creates important preconditions for liberating Russia from its yoke. Let me remind the reader that nowadays the word “liberal” means not “fighter for the freedom of the individual,” as it did in Voltaire’s time, but “vehicle of the interests of the global monopolies at any price, even to the detriment of one’s own people.” On March 1, the unused funds remaining in the accounts of the federal budget amounted to 7.6 trillion rubles: if we assume that it is necessary to invest in Crimea for five years in a row at the level indicated above, then Russia can reunite with another sixteen such regions and money will still be left over.
Incidentally, in view of the disintegration of the Ukrainian state and the dislocation and banditry in Ukraine, after a certain time, I think this prospect will come onto the agenda—even despite the wishes of the Russian state, just as the issue of Crimea came onto the agenda despite its wishes. After all, no bureaucrat wants yet another headache: what changed the situation was, on the one hand, the real threat of bloodshed and, on the other hand, the clearly expressed will of the overwhelming majority of the population of Crimea.
Many people are already comparing the forthcoming task of modernizing Crimea with the preparations for the Sochi Olympics, which, for all the blunders and complaints, were at least conducted at the highest world level. Few people yet realize that the chief miracle of the Olympics was not the absence of accidents, not the phenomenal opening ceremony, not the high level of service, and not even the victory of the Russian team. The chief miracle of the Olympics was the quick and effective correction of shortcomings. For example, when certain sports installations started to collapse because they had been built on top of karst sinkholes without inserting the necessary piles (many people had warned about this, including myself) the required work was done almost instantaneously. This work was so effective that the installations not only stood firm throughout the Olympics but will not (as originally planned) be demolished now that the Olympics have ended: they will remain usable for decades.
The Olympics and Crimea are similar in the sense that both are sudden rush jobs, though necessitated by different causes—in the one case by bureaucratic corruption and abuse, in the other case by a Nazi coup in a fraternal country. However, the Olympics were only a one-off event, even though many of the installations are so promising from a commercial point of view that entrepreneurs have already taken out long-term leases on them or purchased them outright. Crimea, by contrast, is forever. It will be equipped with facilities not for a few important events but for profitable long-term operations—and not for the elite but primarily for its residents. Otherwise things will simply not work out.
In addition, we see that the Russian state, for all its defects and even vices, learns from its mistakes. The 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit [in Vladivostok] was conducted, according to the live testimony of President Putin, “on a building site”—and culminated in the removal of the governor. But the [2013] Universiade in Kazan passed with a minimum of scandal. And we did get through the Sochi Olympics, albeit exerting all our strength and “holding our breath”; moreover, they did not take place “on a building site” (although some installations were completed with guests already present) and there were no accidents. And hardly any of the guests, let alone the participants, even noticed the notorious “Sochi mentality” so salient in the behavior of some liberal politicians.
Crimea is the next large-scale project. Despite the suddenness of its emergence it is being worked out at considerably greater depth than the Sochi Olympics and so far without significant losses of time. It suffices to recall that one of the first Russian officials to visit Crimea was Andrei Belousov, the aide to President Putin for economic affairs and one of Russia’s best economists. Of course, everything could be spoiled and in particular stolen—even a nuclear warhead (such an incident occurred at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union). And the propensity of the Russian leadership to corruption remains extremely strong, so the apprehensions of Russian society are justified.
But here comes the snag. Reunification with Crimea was in direct contradiction to this propensity to corruption: it was accomplished in defiance of the clearly expressed will of the Russian “offshore aristocracy”! The Russian Yanukovyches, just like their Ukrainian counterparts, were afraid that the West would freeze their assets, and desperately wanted to avoid not only reunification with Crimea but also, when this was still possible, a customs union with Ukraine! Indeed, I was told by them that the Ukrainians would compete with Russian producers, that the Ukrainian negotiating style was unacceptable, and that “unless we leave Sevastopol we will be unable to equip a normal base for the fleet near Novorossiisk”—that is practically a word-for-word quotation! It is fundamentally important to our whole understanding of the current moment in Russian development that the decision to reunite with Crimea is virtually the first decision to be made in the history of post-Soviet Russia and—more important still—implemented not within the framework of the propensity to corruption but in direct contradiction to it.
Of course, it is possible to ruin anything given the desire to do so. It is enough just to relax—and by no means only in our country. But we see no signs of this happening, at least so far. It seems to me a very important fact that against the background of the living hell into which the Euro-Nazis and other supporters of “European values” are hastily dragging Ukraine, even the least prosperous regions of Russia no longer look too bad. It suffices to recall that even during the worst times there were no do-it-yourself bandit checkpoints exacting tribute from everyone passing through on the approaches to Pikalyovo [a depressed town in Leningrad oblast—Trans.] as there were in pre-Taliban Afghanistan and as there are now in Ukraine.
So even in the disastrous event of everything that is worst in Russia being transferred to Crimea, it will still be an oasis of prosperity against the background not only of yesterday’s but also, alas, of today’s Ukraine.
The new “Cold War”
During the fast-flowing Crimean crisis, the Russian leaders—virtually for the first time since Yevgeny Primakov “changed course over the Atlantic”—defended the interests of their country and their nation timidly, inconsistently, and partially, but defended them all the same. While abandoning the inhabitants of southern and eastern Ukraine to the tender mercies of the West’s Nazi protégés, they nonetheless started the process of the reunification of our homeland, torn apart by liberal reformers—and Putin suddenly appeared in the guise of a worthy historical heir to the legacy of Catherine the Great [Catherine annexed Crimea in 1783—Trans.].
The reaction of the Americans and Eurocrats to this was naturally hostile. Having brought open Nazis to power in Kyiv, the West perceived their rejection by the majority of Ukrainians as an attack on sacred European values—aggressive homosexuality and Russophobia. And Russia’s return to its historical borders, albeit only at a single point, was a clear and direct threat. True, it turns out that thanks to the liberal “fifth column,” which until now has fully determined all of Russia’s socioeconomic policy, our cooperation with the West is so disadvantageous to us that its contraction as a result of sanctions will be to our advantage.
In fact, expulsion from the World Trade Organization (WTO) would release the Russian economy from such a yoke of one-sided constraints that the Americans no longer even hint at this option. Having rashly blurted out that they would end military cooperation, they nervously wait to see whether Russia will take them at their word and follow the example of mighty Kyrgyzstan in closing down the NATO military base on its territory (near Ulyanovsk).
Merkel declared that she was ready to punish the Russians (essentially for rejecting the ideas of Nazism—this is largely consistent with the historical tradition of the German state), even if doing so were to inflict damage on the German economy. This aroused lively interest and puzzlement in a Germany already fainting under the weight of European integration (not to mention the excessive appreciation of the euro), and also the suspicion that a third successive term is too much not only for “the barbarian Putin” but also for patented democrats. As a result she was forced to change her position very quickly and officially declare in the Bundesrat that she could not sacrifice the economic interests of the Germans for the sake of “friends far off across the ocean.” The French government pondered: should it not cancel the deal to supply Russia with helicopter carriers that no one in our country needs at incredibly high prices—and thereby inflict quite pointless damage on itself? The point is that the purchase of these helicopter carriers, as far as can be judged, was not so much a corrupt operation in the style that was the trademark of Serdiukov’s people as payment for Russia’s lease on the spaceport in [French] Guiana. Thanks to its location on the equator heavy rocket launches yielded enormous profits, part of which went to purchase the helicopter carriers. Had France agreed to sell us the Charles de Gaulle, the second best aircraft carrier in the world, the breakdown of the deal would have been a painful misfortune. But helicopter carriers are of no special use to anyone, either to Russia or to France: withdrawal from the deal will save us a considerable amount of money (both for the purchase and for servicing) while leaving France with a huge wasted investment.
Thus, in reality, sanctions will come down to freezing the assets of a few dozen people (including the deputy Yelena Mizulina, who has contrived not to say a single word about Ukraine or Crimea, and a number of military men who have no assets abroad) and creating some inconvenience for a few hundred thousand Russians whose credit cards were serviced by the Bank of Russia, against which sanctions have been imposed. This has again caused Russians to be badly disappointed with the West. The “offshore oligarchy” that has been plundering and laying waste our homeland throughout the quarter century of national betrayal must be destroyed—and freezing its assets is much more humane than physical extermination and social revolution.
The West has again made clear through the information war against us that any step in the direction of reason, any step in the direction of national interests and social health, any step in the direction of the people’s welfare will be met with obstruction and aggression both from world business and its lying liberal lackeys in the West as well as inside Russia. If the Russian state really exists (or at least wants to exist) as a mouthpiece of the interests of the nation and not just as a collection of top officials with their secretaries, then it will have to make the switch from the liberal plunder of the country to its development, which will inevitably provoke the heartrending hysteria and fierce hatred of the West. The money stolen from Russia by corrupt individuals is taken abroad to fashionable places, where it becomes a resource at the disposal of world business; if instead our money is channeled into the country’s development it will be lost to world business. “Nothing personal, but business is business”—had the fascists inscribed this motto on the gates of Buchenwald the death camp would still be operating today and its shares would be quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.
In order to develop Russia it is necessary to purge the state of the “fifth column” of offshore aristocrats who, even under bombing (as shown by the example of the Yugoslav authorities in 1999), work against their own country for the sake of the capital assets they have invested in the West. The West has confirmed that its sanctions will not touch its own “agents of influence” (or will touch them only in words). No problem: that is our job and we must do it. The time has come for the authorities to get rid of both impotent bureaucrats and liberals who consider it their duty to serve not Russia but world business.
An attempt was made to “nationalize the elites” by prohibiting the possession of bank accounts and real estate abroad, but it was thwarted by an uprising of bureaucrats, who threatened to resign. The uprising was sudden and they held onto their real estate. But the Russian Yanukovyches will only bring the country to the same plight to which Yanukovych brought Ukraine—the seizure of power by Nazis (or, given our realities, by Islamists), the extinction of statehood, and ruin. For this not to recur, Medvedev’s government must be purged of all except those few individuals who want to build our country and not a castle of their own in Austria, which long ago replaced the “little house in Paris” of popular folklore.
Russia has enough honest professionals capable of heading the Bank of Russia and enough competent managers capable of leading the government. Yes, people say that one of the best governors refused this post three times, while one of the best state company directors refused it twice. But perhaps they simply did not believe that the president was serious; in that case he should prove it. For only when we have a healthy government will it become possible to take simple steps to weaken the hotheads in the West.
In response even to the vague promise of the United States and the EU to restrict foreign trade and to the exclusion of Russia from the G8 we should convene a summit of Chinese business in order to discuss how and in exchange for what to transfer to Chinese business the money that the Americans and Europeans no longer want. And we should impose the strictest possible sanctions against the sources of Russophobia in the European Union—Poland and the Baltic states—and also against their businesses in Russia. We should respond to the hysterics from the United States with a careful analysis of the harm caused to our health by American fast foods (starting with McDonald’s), beverages (Coca-Cola and Pepsi), and chocolate containing genetically modified organisms. Yes, banning them will temporarily reduce tax revenues, but the health of the nation is worth more.
Is the mass use of contrafacts impeding our partnership with Microsoft? Then state bodies and state companies should switch from its licensed products to open source software (Linux), even if it will have to be supplemented and standardized. It is necessary to devise a plan to replace Boeing and Airbus airplanes with domestically manufactured airplanes—and to implement that plan. In accordance with the wish of Mr. Kerry, as a gesture of goodwill, it is high time to leave the WTO: serious Western politicians, from International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde to U.S. congressmen—are convinced that WTO membership is harmful for us. It is not polite to insult our partners by ignoring their opinion. Modernization of the economy should be financed primarily out of the dollar reserves of the state, and if this upsets the U.S. government let us convert the remaining reserves (and the proceeds of raw material exports) into safer currencies.
Nothing now prevents the revival of Russia except the traitors in power; getting rid of them is literally a matter of life and death for our nation. Besides this and above all, Russia must of course stop funding Nazism. Somehow we forget that by supplying gas to the current Nazi junta in Kyiv—and at a discount or even without payment—we commit a very grave crime in the eyes of both Russian and international law—the financing of Nazism and terrorism. Even in legal terms Russia has no right to do this! So the managers of Gazprom must be threatened with prosecution unless they immediately abolish the discount for all regions of Ukraine that have not declared themselves independent of the Nazis in Kyiv.
In the event of failure to pay for even a single cubic meter of gas (and total debt arrears now exceed $2 billion) the supply of gas to territories in the former Ukraine under Nazi rule must be cut off completely. Let the EU member states that have organized the advent of the Nazis to power and support them deal with the consequences of their own plots and successful operations with political technologies. And should even a single cubic meter of gas intended for the EU be stolen, the supply of gas must be cut off at the border of regions that recognize the authority of the Euro-Nazis. Formally, of course, we sell our gas to the Europeans at the western border of Ukraine; but a coup d’état is an indisputable force majeure that overrules all constraints on us in this matter.
No less important and obligatory than stopping the funding of Euro-Nazism is confiscating assets of its sponsors in Russia. A significant number of Ukrainian oligarchs who sponsored the Euromaidan and figures in the current Kyiv junta have not just bank accounts and real estate but major enterprises in Russia—not to mention palaces on the south coast of Crimea. All of these assets must be confiscated in connection with the Russophobia, anti-Russian activity, and Nazism of their owners.
The acquiescence of Euro-Nazism on the part of the Russian authorities sometimes acquires a grotesque character. It has reached the point that in Kemerovo oblast, coalminers who had not been paid their wages for two months received the official and honest explanation that the owner of the mine—a Ukrainian oligarch—was sending this money to finance the revolution in Kyiv. Situations of this kind are impermissible even without such explanations.
Crimea: Key to Russia’s future
There is not the slightest doubt that even the most urgent of current tasks should not be allowed to obscure strategic goals under any circumstances. The key question is a simple one: what will Russia make out of Crimea? The mechanical transfer to Crimea of the realities of today’s Russia, including all our problems and vices, would be a disastrous mistake. There is an idea of turning Crimea into a showcase for Russia, in the same way as Saakashvili made the Georgian villages of South Ossetia a showcase for Georgia. A showcase is better, but by its very function it is not lasting: it exists only until the first stone is thrown at it. And in view of the Nazi regime in Kyiv and the carefully planned multilevel aggression of the West there will be more than enough stones.
After a few years of intelligent investment, Crimea can become a powerful generator of profit for all of Russia. Egypt, sinking into Islamist medievalism, is gradually closing to mass tourism, and the creation of a modern tourist industry—including recuperative tourism, tours of the peninsula, and youth festivals like Kazantip (which will move its location due to restoration of the abandoned nuclear power plant but retain its name and significance)—can once again make Crimea a spa for all of Russia.
And when the water problem is solved, Crimea will feed Russia again: at present only 150,000 of the 450,000 hectares sown in the Soviet period are under cultivation, even though consumers in the developed countries have dreamed of expanding the areas in Crimea sown with lavender and other volatile oil crops, buying up their harvests almost down to the very roots. By virtue of the unique natural conditions in Crimea, even familiar plants there acquire quite extraordinary and unique properties.
Nevertheless, it is not enough to turn Crimea into a “profit center” for Russia. The strategic significance of the peninsula to Russia is that many of the factors that block our development are absent there. Crimea does not (yet) have a mindless and aggressive bureaucracy. It is not subjected to the all-encompassing tyranny of huge monopolies. It does not even have the divergent systems of bookkeeping and tax accounting that hang like a millstone around the neck of Russian business: accounts are kept almost in accordance with European norms. Yes, Crimea has Ukrainian vices—but they will be overcome together with Ukrainian customs and regulatory norms, and it is extremely important to combine the good points of Russia and precrisis Ukraine in the sphere of regulatory norms as well as other spheres. Then Crimea will approach an ideal model of economic development, one fundamentally new to Russia—and we will be able to extend it throughout our country. There are grounds for the timid hope that our bureaucracy will be able to grasp the opportunities that this opens up and set about tackling this biggest and most difficult but also most promising task.
And, of course, it is necessary to implement regional economic projects. Besides a national center of yachting and tourism, it makes sense to establish an offshore financial facility for Europe in Crimea insofar as our leadership shies away from placing it in the most suitable region—that is, Kaliningrad oblast. Citizens of the developed countries of Europe have been deprived of offshore facilities and pine for them terribly: such a zone in Crimea will be in great demand among Europeans and give Russia a qualitatively new and very significant lever of influence over the whole European Union.
A unique situation: Why things may work out in Crimea
Many attempts have been made over the quarter century of national betrayal to propose to the Russian state a rational path for the development of the country. The most striking example (and one of the first) was the programmatic pamphlet issued by Solzhenitsyn in 1990 and titled How Shall We Rebuild Russia? [Kak nam obustroit’ Rossiiu]. Alas, it came out at exactly the time that the newly empowered liberals were pondering an altogether different question: how shall we plunder Russia? For this reason, they simply did not hear him and confined themselves to the formality—in fact, mockery—of copying isolated fragments of his proposals such as naming the lower chamber of parliament “the State Duma.” Solzhenitsyn himself was deeply disappointed in the social order created by the Russian reformers and branded it with the term “oligarchy” (he was the first to do so—a fact now firmly forgotten).
A fundamentally different situation has now emerged in our country. On the one hand, most of the Soviet legacy has already been plundered—and the era associated with this process thereby objectively and naturally comes to an end. On the other hand, the West has clearly demonstrated that it supports corrupt rulers in underdeveloped countries only for as long as they remain in power and continue to bring the money stolen from their nations to the West. Losing power, or even just retiring and trying to start spending the money they have invested in developed countries, entails quite unacceptable and sometimes fatal risks for the former rulers.
This is not advertised, but for several years already many highly placed businessmen and officials—not, of course, those belonging to the liberal clan—have been bringing their capital back to Russia. This is not a passing fashion or a fit of panic, as in 2006, but a conscious, planned process without haste or losses. This is by no means the dominant tendency, because for the time being the liberal clan predominates in the economy and in the state. But its opponents within the leadership of our country seem to have realized that there is no place for them abroad. And the process of their return, slow and inconsistent as it may be, is under way.
The Crimean crisis has demonstrated that our state, for all its vices and despite its “offshore aristocracy,” is already capable of directly challenging the interests of world business. The hysteria in the West shows that world business has also realized that this is so, and this exposes us to serious risks, but something else is important for us—the existence of a quite large and powerful stratum of managers and administrators who understand that they can survive only by developing Russia and that its further plunder would be suicidal for themselves.
This stratum did not yet exist in Solzhenitsyn’s time. It revealed itself in two isolated episodes in 2003 and 2005. But now for the first time it has made itself known through a public act of state policy. It has come to the surface: Mendeleev, Solzhenitsyn, and many others now have an audience for their appeals. Russia’s “subject of strategic action” is already manifest but has yet to become aware of itself, just as the class of commanders of the security forces (siloviki) was not yet aware of itself in the period between Putin’s appointment as director of the FSB and his advent to power. But its self-awareness is now just a matter of time.
Under conditions of global crisis, of course, this time may not arrive. We must not let down our guard. But as a nation, for the first time, we now have a clear and positive prospect for which people of the most diverse political views and aesthetic preferences are already working. And, as we have seen in the Crimean episode, their work is bearing fruit. Let us join in the work.