By Eleanor Knott
Crimea, annexed by Russia last year
— although to date the annexation is recognized by only handful of countries — is back in the news. On Nov. 22,
2015, Crimea’s electricity towers were blown up, leaving the region dark.
Mainland Ukraine had been supplying most of Crimea’s electricity since Russia’s
annexation of the peninsula in March 2014, but has not stepped up since the
towers blew up. Ukraine has no legal responsibility to provide the occupied
territory with electricity, but refusing to help provide power of course has
the possibility of alienating Crimean residents from the Ukrainian regime.
Alternatively, if Russia is seen as unable to ensure something as basic as
power in its newly acquired territory, perhaps this will turn more residents
against the annexation and in favor of a return to Ukraine. All of which
once again points to the importance of understanding how Crimeans see
themselves in terms of their own national identity.
Many observers have suggested that since most
Crimeans were ethnically Russian, they were therefore loyal to Russia, and
therefore welcomed annexation. But is it true? Would Crimeans have voted to
join Russia if the referendum had been legal, free and fair?
As is often the case, the actual evidence
suggests a much more complicated picture. Back in the 1990s, Crimean
separatists had tried to secede from Ukraine, in part to be closer to Russia.
They were able to organize a referendum in 1994, which Kiev declared
illegal. This referendum showed mass support for a “treaty based” relationship
between Kiev and Crimea, and for allowing dual Russian and Ukrainian
citizenship, which was banned under Ukrainian law. However, following this
peak, the movement failed to achieve secession, weakened by the egoism of its leader, Yurii
Meshkov, who failed to foster ideological cohesion within the movement, nor
secure enough mass support to crystallize a viable opposition to the Ukrainian
state. After this, separatist politicians became the “losers” of mainstream
politics in Crimea, according to those I interviewed, and popular support for separatism waned.
What’s more, Crimea is not in fact populated by
an ethnically Russian, pro-Russian majority. That’s far too homogenized an
image of the peninsula. In fact, before annexation, Crimea’s Russian ethnic
majority was highly fractured and contested, as I will explain in the remainder
of this post. Therefore, it is important to go beyond simple explanations of
ethnicity as a cause of annexation, or an indicator of support for Russia.
Five categories of Crimean ethnic identity
In 2012 and 2013, as part of my PhD research, I
conducted 53 interviews in Simferopol, Crimea, to examine the meanings of being Russian in Crimea. I interviewed individuals from across the
political and social spectrum, including many from the post-Soviet generation,
to unpack the experiences of being Russian in relation to Ukraine, Russia and
Crimea.
Based on this data, I constructed categories to
help explain the complexity of Russian identity that I observed. Except for the
final category, all respondents said that Russian was their native language and
language of common communication.
Discriminated
Russians
Ethnic Russians
Crimeans
Political Ukrainians
Ethnic Ukrainians
These categories offer a more nuanced look at
Crimean and Ukrainian identity, going beyond the mutually exclusive ethnic and
census categories of “ethnic Russian” and “ethnic Ukrainian” that most
observers have used before now. Using these can help illuminate how Crimeans
are actually negotiating complex questions of identity, loyalty and territorial
aspirations. Let me describe these categories in more detail.
Discriminated Russians most ardently identified as Russian, ethnically,
culturally and linguistically, and were supporters of Russia. They felt
marginalized and threatened by Ukraine’s policies of Ukrainization, and were
members of pro-Russian organizations. By 2014, these organizations came to
endorse annexation. That catapulted their leaders, like Sergei Aksenov of Crimea’s pro-Russian party (Russkoe
Edinstvo), to positions of power — and helped Russia claim some legitimacy in its occupation. It’s important to note, however, that before
2014, only these few highly politicized individuals, including pensioners, were
claiming that they were the victims of discrimination.
Discrimination was therefore a sentiment of
those who felt they lost out from post-Soviet politics, rather than those
willing and able to adapt, in particular the younger post-Soviet generation.
By contrast, Ethnic Russians identified
as ethnically Russian. But they expressed no sense of being discriminated
against by Ukraine. Instead, they felt a sense of legitimacy in being Russian,
and at the same time, they were not only happy to reside in, but felt a sense
of belonging to, Ukraine.
Crimeans and Political Ukrainians blurred
ethnic categories in ways that could not be captured by censuses.
Crimeans described Crimean (“Krymchan”)
as their primary identity, saying that they identified as both ethnically
Ukrainian and Russian, having come from ethnically mixed families. They
expressed a sense of belonging — both as individuals and as a territory — to
both Ukraine and Russia.
Political Ukrainians subverted ethnic categories. They defined
themselves in terms of their political connections to Ukraine, as post-Soviet
citizens of Ukraine. While they identified their parents as ethnically Russian,
Russia was a foreign place to them. They felt that ethnicity did not determine
their life chances in Crimea or Ukraine because everyone — no matter what
ethnicity — “lives badly.”
Unlike Ethnic Ukrainians, Political
Ukrainians saw themselves as a post-Soviet category who could conceive
of themselves as Ukrainian and from Crimea.
Ethnic Ukrainians explained themselves as Ukrainian, culturally
and ethnically, because they were born in parts of Ukraine
that were outside Crimea.
These categories revealed a lack of association
among identity, citizenship status and territorial aspirations. None of those I
interviewed held, or admitted to holding, Russian citizenship, citing it as
inaccessible and/or undesirable. Only Discriminated Russians wanted, but could
not access, Russian citizenship; they wanted leverage against Ukraine, which
they felt marginalized them. All other categories saw Russian citizenship as
undesirable, offering rights they neither needed nor wanted.
None of the people I interviewed wanted to
secede from Ukraine or to join Russia. They were, rather, happy with the status
quo. Even Discriminated Russians, the most pro-Russian and pro-Russia category,
supported the territorial status quo, preferring peace to separatism or
unification, which they associated with “bloodshed” and a “cataclysm.”
Regardless of how they identified, my respondents said that separatist
sentiments had existed only on the political margins after the failure of the
separatist movement to achieve secession in 1994.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea was anything but
inevitable
In other words, I did not find a Crimea that was
overwhelmingly identified as Russian, with residents yearning to return to the
country where they truly belonged. Rather, Russian identity was complex,
fractured and contested. Just because someone identified as Russian did not
mean they would be politically pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian.
Further, just because someone identified as
Russian, it did not mean they wanted to join Russia. All my respondents saw
Ukraine as legitimate and wanted to remain within it. Even Discriminated
Russians preferred a “bad peace” to a “good war,” as David Laitin argued for ethnic Russians in post-Soviet
Estonia.
In other words, Russia’s annexation of Crimea
was anything but inevitable. It was instead a critical break that came after Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests. Ethnic Russian identity or mixed loyalty does
not explain Crimea’s annexation or the ongoing Donbas conflict. How and why did
Crimea’s pro-Russian organizations and Ukraine’s Party of Regions become
willing participants of Russia’s annexation? That is a large and more complex
question, and deserves an answer that’s better than a simplistic recitation of
ethnicity.
Eleanor Knott is a PhD candidate in
political science (expected 2015) at the London School of Economics.
No comments:
Post a Comment