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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)
By: Anssi Kullberg, April 2001, Tartu
On 21st April 2001, exactly five years were passed since the first president of Chechnya, Dzohar Dudayev, was killed in a Russian rocket attack along with his bodyguard and two military advisors. His Russian wife, artist Alla Dudayeva who nowadays hides from her own native country in Istanbul, and one of the bodyguards were miraculously saved. In Tartu, Estonia, it has been a tradition to rise a toast for Commander Dudayev on this date, in the house where he used to work, presently the Barclay Hotel. After all, Dudayev was the man who acted as the commander of the most important Soviet air force base in the Baltics, the 23rd Strategic Bomber Division of Tartu, and refused to follow the Kremlin’s order to crush the Estonian "separatist movement" with armed force in 1991.
Finns can be grateful to Dudayev that the Baltic countries became independent with minor bloodshed and no full-scale war was started in the immediate neighbourhood of Finland. Without him, the Baltic countries could today be called in the headlines "an eternal nest of conflicts", a backyard where Russia is tolerated to act like she acts in the Balkans, in Moldova and in the Caucasus. Without Dudayev, Finland would be obliged to comment on the issue of thousands of Estonian refugees flooding to Finland and other European states, and to protest whenever Russia "accidentally" bombs the "bases of Baltic international terrorists" acting on Finnish territory. The Baltic area was saved from this. Dudayev quitted the Red Army and returned to his native land Chechnya, where he became elected the president during the same year 1991. Unfortunately, his homeland did not have as good luck as Estonia had. Those in Moscow’s Security Committee in 1994, who dared to oppose the maniacal endeavour of Boris Yeltsin and Pavel Grachev to shell the whole Caucasus into middle ages, were not as brave and strong in their mild resistance as Dudayev had been in Tartu.
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The pro-Russian – and ethnic Russian – communist Vladimir Voronin, who recently gained Moldavian presidency, visited Moscow, talking like Lucastro and acting like a good vassal at his master’s feet. (‘Lucastro’ is a nickname for the Belarussian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka.) By Voronin’s rise to the throne in Chisinau, the Trojan horse of Transnistria finally swallowed all Moldova, making the Prut river the de facto border between free Europe and Russian dominion. The West and especially the OSCE seemed more than eager to passively seal this course of affairs. Instead of getting rid of Slobos and Lucastros, Europe got one more of them – right on the edge of Central Europe.
At the same time in Bucharest, capital of Moldova’s free big brother, the old politruk Ion Iliescu seems to have grown healthy in his political behaviour and when listening to his speaking nowadays it is hard to believe that this is the same former aide of Nicolae Ceausescu’s, who still in the early 1990s imported buss-loads of Jiu valley miners to beat students and intellectuals who were demonstrating in the boulevards of Bucharest. Now Iliescu humbly received his former main critics, the editorial staff of an opposition newspaper, and wanted to show to the Romanians that he is not like the Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma and the former Moldavian president Petru Lucinschi, who have silenced opposition press with peculiar methods. (Also Lucinschi crushed student demonstrations in Chisinau during his reign, but as usually, the world neglected what happened in Moldova.)
A group of Ukrainian students were envious at the Romanians, but swore that "we will do the same to Kuchma that you did to Ceausescu". But their hopes are getting less: Kuchma just fired prime minister Viktor Yushchenko. In Chisinau, the atmosphere is even gloomier. Nobody really knows where did the "popular masses" came from, who voted the communists into power. Students of the University of Chisinau are queuing for residence permits to Romania as long as they still can be got. As many as 600’000 Moldavians have already left the country for Romania and later maybe for the West. In Romania, the Moldavians now flock into the ultra-nationalist "Romania Mare" party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor. Tudor’s party has for a change got rid of its admiration at Putin and now considers Russia to be a greatest threat for Romanian people. Still the party is dangerous, and if Tudor and his gang would gain leadership in Romania, Vladimir Putin, Kuchma, Lukashenka and Voronin would get one more colleague to the rows of authoritarian regents in Eastern Europe. During the communist reign, Tudor used to study history in Vienna, with the communist party’s acceptance and acting as a Securitate agent. In Vienna he also changed into ultra-nationalism. Ironically, Austria is the most pathologically anti-Romanian country west from the Dnester.
Putin wants to annex Voronin under the yoke of the Kremlin, because Russia is seeking to surround herself with backward and authoritarian principates governed by dictatorial vassal voivods who gain their power from Moscow. It is surprising that the part of the former empire where this process of backing KGB generals into vassal regency started, namely Georgia and Azerbaijan, still seems to stay most successfully defiant, and along with the Baltic countries, seems freest from the strangling grip of the Kremlin octopus. Czar Nicholas I made Russia the "Evil Empire" governed by secret police, having been attracted to the Prussian police state model. In the contemporary caricatures he was described as an octopus. The core of the octopus later changed its name several times: the Okhrana became NKVD, Cheka, KGB and finally FSB. No relevant change took place within it.
Now the "securocracy" of Russia is driving a powerful expansion over the borders of the Russian Federation. The "Evil Empire" is testing her limits, knowing that only Washington can set those limits to its behaviour, because there is no united let alone consistent European foreign policy – not even concerning the defence of the continent. In the East, Russia is being offered superior challenge by China, about which Russia wants to silence since she has proved the inferior compared with Beijing’s might. In the South, the Russian expansion of hegemony can only be stopped by Turkey and Pakistan. For historical reasons it is very difficult for Romania and Bulgaria to start co-operating with Turkey, unless the West appears as a support for this with balancing ability.
A Romanian researcher and historian who speaks, besides his mother tongue, French, Italian, English, German, Hungarian, Estonian and Russian, told about the little-by-little frustration of the Romanians at the apparently purposeful Western policy of advocating Romania’s destabilisation, discrimination and ignorance. It seems as if it is the West’s purpose to sacrifice and throw Romania and the whole Balkans into the interest sphere of the Russian Empire. Samuel Huntington’s "Clash of Civilizations" has also been translated into Romanian – into the language whose speakers may hate Huntington’s dangerous and immensely damageful theory more than any other nation. A Bulgarian told about suspicions that the fighting around Tetova are another part of a conspiracy of ignorance between the West and Russia in order to isolate the Balkan countries and to push them into the Russian sphere of interest. Balkanians are recalling the bloody palace coup of the Yugoslav kingdom, which was masterminded by Russia, and about how Russia initiated the WW I in order to destroy the tolerant and multi-ethnic European empires of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.
"Who else than Russia would benefit? Who else could be behind the obvious provocation of the Tetova district?" These are ever more usual questions. Nothing is known about the so-called Albanian guerrillas of Macedonia – neither in Skopje nor in the UÇK (KLA), in Prishtina nor in Tirane. No leaders have been found for the gang, no agenda and no supporters. The UÇK leader Hashim Thaci, the moderate Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, the leaders of Macedonian Albanian parties like Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the biggest Albanian party of Macedonia (Democratic Albanian Party), and the leaders of Albania proper were all among the first to condemn the activities of the mysterious provocateurs of the Tetova mountains.
Macedonia is an optimal target for restarting destabilisation in the Balkans. It is an historical choice, since the Russian terror policy in the Balkans started in some sense from the so-called "Macedonian terrorists" and the whole creation of the Macedonian myth was a brilliant proof of Stalin and Tito’s ability to manipulate ethnic politics, and even more importantly, the Western understanding of Balkan affairs. This was when Stalin and Tito still were friends. The "Greek plan" of Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin to turn Constantinople and Asia Minor into Russian territory had got its communist version in the Balkans. And the present Russia has again returned to the same megalomaniac tradition, in which the main direction of expansion is the south: the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. The goal is the same as it used to be: hegemony of whole Eurasia and the reincarnation of Genghis Khan’s empire. In the form given by Ivan I Kalita and Ivan IV Groznyi, however, even the Mongol Empire’s legacy has indeed become ‘groznyi’, a real "Evil Empire".
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But let us return to the beginning of this article, where I frightened you with what would have happened in the vicinity of Finland if the forthcoming Chechen president would not have had enough of courage, perseverance and defiance to dare to refuse from the Kremlin’s orders. Nowadays many Finns and West Europeans might feel that what happens in the Balkans or in the Caucasus is still distant, however terrible it was. Only few have personal ties to these areas. Most Westerners do not feel or face personal losses when a massacre takes place in Tbilisi, Prishtina, Argun or in Chisinau, and when the news agencies publish some small news about the issue, often filled with errors.
But what if the war would come really close? The Baltic countries are weak and they have not even before been able to gain support from their most natural allies – each other. The margin state policy from Finland to the Black Sea failed in the interwar times and nothing in the present time indicates that something would have been learned, when the situation gets real again. And we might get into the serious trouble much sooner than any of us dares to think, with the emerging expansionist Russian Empire. The Baltic countries can be destabilised within two weeks. The USA knows this and as long as the Baltic countries can be kept outside the NATO, they have no hope at all as soon as the first news of "ethnic conflict in Narva" or "government of Daugavpils" are being spread by Reuters and BBC all over the world. At that point of time it is already too late. The dragon is at our gates.
Then what about Central Europe? Today Moldova, tomorrow Romania and Bulgaria? That day when the wave of destabilisation – by silent Western acceptance – reaches Romania, that day it is all too late. That day the heart of Europe has again returned to the Middle Ages. War is again everyday thing for every European, and the European heartlands are plagued by something thousand times more serious than mad cows. Europe will be once again divided, and newly fanatic Russia will throw our continent into a new major war. The only thing that can stop it is that the Western superpower would be governed by a man who is strong and righteous enough to be prepared to start a new cold war. Namely, at some point of present development, a cold war can be the only way to avoid a major hot war.
Romania is the biggest and most important non-Slavonic and pro-Western country on the Russian Empire’s western front, which Russia cannot occupy militarily right so. But if Romania falls, even if it only falls from the Western minds, the last obstacle between embracing Russian and Serbian troops has been removed. Putin is already pressuring Voronin to sign a contract that would subject the Moldavian army to Russia. The Romanian president will not accept anything like that – not even Iliescu. So, Russia cannot annex Romania with the methods used in Moldova or Ukraine. But Romania can be easily destabilised, and if this happens, the NATO member Hungary will no longer be able to stay out of the situation. If Romania was to fall, Bulgaria has no hope any longer. In Bulgaria, not even destabilisation is needed – it is enough to shift power into the hands of Panslavists.
Russia seems now to be building a real new "Evil Empire", where the worst elements of all the fashions of Russian imperialist history are combined: Orthodox fundamentalism and agitation of religious hatred; the myth and mission of third Rome; the imperial and centralist legacy of Genghis Khan; the obsession of Peter the Great to make Russia a Western country yet without liberty and democracy; the megalomaniac plans of Catherine and Potemkin to conquer Constantinople and Jerusalem (with the logical continuation of turning against the last remaining competitor, Rome, i.e. the West); the cruelty of Aleksey Yermolov; the attraction of Nicholas I towards espionage, secret police’s power and ostensible Prussian military discipline extended even to civil service; order which turns into its distortion, arbitrary terror; and of course, Stalin’s distorted Machiavellian views on how politics should be driven. These are the elements that Putin seems to use in order to construct the national mission of present Russia.
The Hungarian magazine Népszabadság described Putin’s mission after Putin’s decision to adopt the Soviet hymn back to Russian national anthem (to replace Yeltsin’s extract from "Life for the Czar"): "Russia can thus salute the new millennium with the Byzantine eagle, with Peter the Great’s tricolour, and – textually cosmetised – with the Stalinist hymn. Even when intending, Putin could not have given a more truthful picture of the present Russia, where Byzantine political intrigues are singularly mixed with Peter the Great’s ambitions and Soviet mentality."
How can the dragon be stopped? Where can we find Saint George of our times, to ride and rescue Europe on his white stallion? (Of course, this article is inspired by the icon that is always on my desk, showing the mentioned saint fighting the incarnation of evil, the red dragon.) Namely, it seems that the dragon is getting ever stronger grip of the strategic behaviour of Moscow and its satellites. This is also a very risky mood for Russians themselves.
At first, the only real counterforce is in the West, but this force should be mobilised in consistent ways, and targeted right. Moscow is by now the wrong address, and also Kiev is starting to be a far too obsolete an address, although once Ukraine had her chance to become a new Kievan Rus, a Russia without the senseless imperialism that has thrown this empire into its present decay and curse. Ukraine should, of course, still be supported, but it makes no more sense to count upon Ukraine. The Americans, who traditionally watch the world through very simplified and geopolitical lenses, have never quite understood how the mental atmosphere among nations is decisive for the direction of mobilisation of resources in these nations. Ukraine is not mentally prepared to gain her place as a significant European nation, or as a challenger of Russia for the heritage of Rus.
Instead, the non-Slavonic frontier nations – the Baltic states, Romania, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan – would today need all the possible support, in order to avoid Moldova’s fate. Georgia and Azerbaijan need Turkey’s support and for that Turkey would dare to abandon her introvertly passive foreign policy, she needs the West’s support. When it comes to the Baltic countries and Romania, which are situated on the doorstep of Central Europe, Europe is the very reference group whose support they need. In her present state of decadence, Europe is not prepared to help them concretely, so that the only hopes lies upon Washington. This is the unfortunate fact.
So what should we do so that we could fulfil our duties as virtuous Paneuropeans? First of all, now as Serbia’s situation is under the eyes of all kinds of international regimes, Europe should take the Baltic countries and Romania as her main questions and addresses of support. Romania (and Moldova) could also be an issue of common interest for both the French and the rest of Europe’s foreign political approach, since it combines the rivalling Mediterranean and East Central European dimensions of the European Union’s perspective. France has traditionally cared about Romania even when Central European countries have been spreading anti-Romanian disinformation and trying to discriminate Romania into the East. Now it would be France’s duty to defend her linguistic relatives also against the eastern threat.
This week some dark cloads already started to gather on Bucharest’s sky. Iliescu showed first time since December symptoms towards less healthy line, as he confronted the skilful and unpolitical Romanian premier Adrian Nastase. The issue of the dispute was the same old trouble of Romania: presidiality and centralism. Iliescu still seems to believe in the centralist model of France, whereas Nastase would like to reform Romania towards more parliamentarianism and increased regional autonomy. Romania could hardly hope anything better. Meanwhile Iliescu wants presidential control over the secret police which is indeed not a healthy sign for country with the past Romania has. Now the question is how badly Iliescu can brake and thus damage the development of Romania. Will he remain in history as a man who failed also on his second term of presidency, or as a man who has learned for the past’s mistakes? Failing in the present situation might prove fatal...
AKK