Joe Orthodox
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 Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:00 am Post subject: unbiased article on Russian imperialism |
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Conflict in the Caucasus
The long history of Russian imperialism.
by Stephen Schwartz
08/15/2008
The latest Russian invasion of Georgia--following the examples provided
by tsars Paul I and his successor Alexander I (in 1801) and Soviet
dictator Vladimir Lenin (in 1921, three years after Georgia first gained
modern independence)--has fully revealed the character of post-Soviet
neo-imperialism under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin's master, his puppet president Dmitry Medvedev, and their
supporters are obviously committed to reversing the dissolution of the
Soviet empire after 1991, with an ambition and ferocity previously
absent among the successors to the Communist dictators. But no one can
really have been surprised by the assault on Georgia. It was clearly on
the Russian agenda beginning early in 2004, when American-educated and
Western-oriented attorney Mikheil Saakashvili was elected Georgia's
president after the peaceful "Rose Revolution." Military expert Ralph
Peters, in a briefing at the American Enterprise Institute on August 13,
argued persuasively that the speed of Russia's latest rape of Georgia
demonstrated that the aggressor's armed forces were ready and waiting
for Putin's signal to act.
Georgia's transition toward democracy coincided with the similar Orange
Revolution in Ukraine and Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. All of them
piqued the anger of Putin, who wanted less rather than more
self-determination in the former Soviet states. But Georgia and Ukraine
had taken further measures to consolidate their Western alignment, by
applying for membership in the NATO alliance. Some commentators imply
that Russian interference in Georgia was spurred by Western recognition
of the independence of Kosovo in February 2008. But a much more serious
contributing fact was NATO's decision at the Bucharest conference in
April, impelled by Germany and France under Russian influence, to reject
Georgian and Ukrainian membership in the defense organization.
President George W. Bush had lobbied for the eastward extension of NATO.
Georgia had joined the Partnership for Peace--considered by most
countries a step toward NATO membership--in 1992, and applied for full
accession in 2002, but Ukraine had delayed its application until early
this year. Exclusion of the two former Soviet possessions was a clear
signal to Putin that Moscow could begin a brutal reassertion of
domination over them.
In pursuing this aim, Putin, trained as an officer of the Soviet secret
police, carried out a series of actions, each of which should have been
enough to warn the world of his intentions. Secessionist movements had
been subsidized by the Russians since the early 1990s in Abkhazia, where
Russian "peacekeepers" were stationed in 1993, and in South Ossetia,
where some residents took Russian rather than Georgian citizenship, even
though Ossetians are not Slavs, but a Christian people of Iranian
origin. Both of these territories have belonged to Georgia for
millennia. But they had been granted fake "autonomy" under Soviet rule,
to fragment the Georgian majority, which is also non-Slav. The
Abkhazians are related to the Georgians, and include Muslims as well as
Christians.
The years since the Rose Revolution, and especially since the rejection
of Georgian and Ukrainian admission to NATO, have seen a rising Russian
policy of provocation against Georgia, the weaker of the two aspirants
to Western defense links. In 2006, mysterious explosions cut off the
Russian supply of natural gas to Georgia. Mainly rhetorical tensions
continued until April 2008, when Russian harassment increased.
Russia announced that it would recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as
separate entities from Georgia, integrating Abkhazia's Black Sea
transport facilities into the Russian air and maritime infrastructure,
and proposing construction of a new gas pipeline in the coastal region.
The same month, Russia's Abkhazian agents shot down a Georgian air force
drone. In July, respected Russian military journalist Pavel Felgenhauer
warned that a Russian-provoked war would break out in Georgia in August.
His prediction was ignored in the West.
As for Saakashvili's responsibility in the situation, the Georgian
president had been pressed to a point where a failure to act to protect
his country's territorial integrity would have indicated surrender to
Moscow without a fight.
Once real war exploded, the Russians began a new round of provocative
public relations actions. They bussed South Ossetian "refugees" from
place to place, describing them as victims of Georgian "genocide."
Moscow declares that it has the right to intervene anywhere the
"dignity" of its co-ethnics, or their allies, may be threatened--within
or outside its borders, and especially in the so-called "near abroad" of
former Soviet territories. The Russians have also, outrageously, called
for the removal, and possible trial, of Saakashvili as an "enemy."
To anybody who has observed the sequence of ethnic wars in the former
Communist world since 1990, the playbook is familiar. Like Putin,
Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic paraded Serbian "victims" around
the former Yugoslavia, and asserted the right to commit mass murder in
Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosovo allegedly to protect his
compatriots. The establishment of mafia enclaves like the "Republika
Srpska," occupying half of Bosnia, and a similar effort now underway
north of Mitrovica in Kosovo, paralleled the nurturing of a mafia
parastate in "Transnistria" on the border of Moldova, as well as Putin's
operations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
But while the effects are the same, Putin has not imitated Milosevic;
rather, he has followed a pattern set even before the Soviet Union began
disintegrating, in 1988, when Armenia, allied with Russia, recovered a
section out of its neighbor, Azerbaijan that had been detached by
Stalin. Armenia and Azerbaijan, which border Georgia to the southwest,
remain at war today. Meanwhile, radical Islamist agitation continues in
Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Daghestan, to Georgia's north. Iran is not far
away; Persia ruled Georgia before the Russian conquest in the 19th
century, and Tehran still sees Georgia as within its potential sphere of
influence. Russia has launched its newest adventure in the most
dangerous part of the European-Asian frontier.
The horror unfolding in Georgia could prove to be the worst such gambit
since the ill-fated Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and may become the
first major clash in a new cold war. And even if Georgia is vanquished,
wise observers like AEI's Leon Aron warn that the real target is
Ukraine. Putin might attempt to reassert Russian control over Crimea,
which came under Ukrainian authority after communism ended; or he might
try to slice off part of Eastern Ukraine as yet another ethnic enclave
susceptible to Russian usurpation. But Ukraine is big, and its native
population is likely unafraid to fight. When Ukraine informed Moscow
that the Russian Black Sea fleet, which was stationed in Crimea, could
not be used against the Georgians, the Russian ships lifted anchor.
Some critics say President Bush was slow to reply to Russian aggression
against Georgia, which had sent troops to fight alongside American
forces in Iraq. As the days went by, however, the U.S. response
improved, and U.S. military and humanitarian supplies have been flown to
the embattled Georgians.
Saakashvili and his people have other friends, whose attitude toward
Russian power is hardly accommodating. Along with Ukrainian president
Viktor Yushchenko, the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and the leaders
of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania flew to Tbilisi to demonstrate their
backing for Putin's victims. They know only too well the history of
their region.
Thus, with the tsar's conquest of Georgia more than 200 years ago, the
ancient Georgian Christian monarchy--which had survived Iranian
rule--was abolished. A few years later, the Georgian Orthodox Church,
which had enjoyed religious autonomy since the 4th century, was forcibly
absorbed into Russian Orthodoxy.
Under the tsars, Georgia was a hotbed of nationalist discontent. By the
beginning of Russia's radical revolutionary period, it had come under
the political dominance of the moderate Socialists, or Mensheviks;
Lenin's invasion in 1921 quashed the only post-tsarist Menshevik regime.
But Georgia also produced Bolsheviks, including Joseph Stalin, who was
educated in a Georgian Orthodox seminary that had become a center for
nationalist and revolutionary indoctrination.
Stalin, who never mastered the Russian language, nonetheless became a
Slav chauvinist, and although his minions in power included his
fellow-Georgian, the feral police boss Lavrenti Beria, he was brutal to
most of his ethnic peers. The dark year 1937, when the murder machine
was operating at full throttle, saw the purge and execution of Titsian
Tabidze, a gifted and renowned modernist poet who had been a close
friend of Boris Pasternak. Tabidze's associate Paolo Yashvili committed
suicide in protest, in the office of the Georgian Writers' Union. These
authors remain beloved heroes and martyrs of the Georgian people.
As for the South Ossetians, whose "leaders" have provided cover for
subversion of Georgian authority, they have their own baleful history.
Under the tsars, the Ossetians were known as prison guards and other
mercenaries for the Russian overlords. Stalin's parents have long been
described as Georgianized Ossetians, and in one of his most memorable
verses, the purged and murdered poet Osip Mandelstam, Russia's greatest
writer after Pushkin, wrote of Stalin, Every killing is sweet as berry
jam / For the proud, broad-chested Ossetian.The poem cost Mandelstam his
life.
It is still possible to prevent more bloodshed in Georgia. But time is
short in dealing with Putin, the proud, physically-fit secret police
veteran, as he advances along the terrible path of his war-mongering
predecessors. |
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