CRIMEA
The current crisis in and about Ukraine has multiple facets. To understand the crisis is to understand each piece. The status of the Crimean Peninsula, jutting into the Black Sea, and its major port-city, Sebastopol, is an important one of the pieces, crying for understanding.
To western politicians and media, it is simple: Russia “invaded” Crimea in 2014, in the midst of the Euromaidan upheaval, and unilaterally, illegally annexed it.
This move is supposedly an example of Russian expansionism. The Russians would also like to gobble up the Donbas region, and preferably all of Ukraine.
Let’s see if a little venture into Crimean history can challenge this accepted view.
RUSSIA AND THE MONGOLS
The Mongols swept out of their homeland in present day Mongolia, central Asia, under Genghis Khan in the early 1200s. Dividing into and absorbing several nations, or “Hordes,” they proceeded to conquer almost all of the huge, populous continent of Asia. The impact of their very bloody conquests, which often sought to completely destroy the agricultural economies of Asia and revert them to pasture, still has a legacy in the conquered countries.
Russia was under the “Mongol yoke” for hundreds of years. One of the successor states of the Mongols, the Crimean Tatar Khanate, dominated by a Turkic people, arose in the Crimea in the mid 15th century and strongly allied with Russia’s rival, the Ottoman Empire, which occupied the ports. They adopted a very specific national occupation: slave catchers and sellers. For some two hundred years they made regular raids into the heart of agricultural Russia and Poland-Lithuania. Some 25 raids are well documented. Historians estimate that the Crimean Tatar Khanate kidnapped 2.5 million Slavic peasants and dragged them back to Crimea, where they were sold in slave markets, mostly distributed into the Ottoman Empire.
The last raid, with 20,000 captives, was in 1769. By this time, however, the Russian Empire had consolidated, modernized, and had had enough. Under Catherine the Great a large army marched south and annexed Crimea, with the defeated Tatar Khanate, into the Russian Empire. The raids, which had held millions of peaceful farmers in terror for hundreds of years, ended, and with them the last of the 500-year torment of Russia from central Asia.
RUSSIAN CRIMEA
Russia proceeded to colonize Crimea with peasants, who lived there uneasily with the subdued Tatars. They founded Sebastopol, which became a major Russian port, crucial both economically and militarily. Some of us know about it because of the bloody siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War in 1854-5.
WARM WATER PORTS
Russia is the largest, coldest country in the world. It has very few ports for its navy and its merchant marine. In fact, until recently, only Sebastopol was ice-free all year. The search for warm-water ports has dominated Russian history for centuries, since Peter the Great.
All other great nations have ample access to the sea lanes. Overcoming its cruel land-locked heritage has been an obsession for Russian leaders, and, by the same token, maintaining that handicap is a goal of those who would “contain” Russia. This may be changing with global warming, but the Russians do not care to gamble on weather.
Since the annexation, Russia is developing other ports in the Black Sea region, but none yet rival the importance of Sebastopol.
The Russian Revolution converted the Russian Empire, including Ukraine, into the Soviet Union, with Sebastopol still crucial. After a very rocky beginning, Ukraine became a stable part of the USSR, the breadbasket of the economy.
NAZI INVASION
Russia was invaded by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1709, by the French under Napoleon in 1812, and by the Nazis, under Hitler in 1941. All these invasions were devastating, especially the Nazi. 20 million people of the Soviet Union died in WWII. Compare that with 300,000 Americans.
The dread of attack from Europe is thus another central theme in Russian politics. When the Nazis swept thru central Europe on their way to defeat in Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow, they found many supporters among the peoples there, including in the western nations of the Soviet Federation, chafing at Russian domination.
The collaborating nations, however, found out, to their horror, what it actually means to ally yourself with Nazi butchers. They were chopped up like the rest of the victims.
Millions of Ukrainians fought in the Red army, against the Nazis, but many also sided with the Nazis, and even participated in the slaughter of the Jews.
NAZI DEFEAT
Despite what we read in western history books, the defeat of the Nazis was mostly a Soviet project. The Red army was chasing the last of the invaders across their border when the western front was finally opened in Normandy, France, on D-Day June, 1944.
The Red army occupied all the nations on their western border, and the Soviets long deliberated how to ensure that they would not be a launching pad for another attack.
By 1954, the USSR felt secure enough in their partnership with Ukraine to transfer jurisdiction of Crimea to them, in hopes that their nearness to the peninsula would hasten its repopulation and economic development.
Sebastopol, however, remained for the most part in Russian hands, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, under long-term lease agreements. There was also a permanent Russian garrison in Crimea.
Sebastopol is a critical feature in the security and economy of Russia.
They need, of course, land access to their indispensable warm-water port, and it must be defensible. Sebastopol gets water and electricity and some of its food from the Crimean Peninsula.
THE CIVIL WAR BEGINS
In early 2014, Ukraine was in chaos. The Nazi movement, after decades festering underground, like an anerobic bacterium, suddenly appeared in broad global daylight on stage in front of 500,000 chanting protestors, beside US senators. The long-festering antagonism between the Ukrainian-speakers and the Russian-speakers in Ukraine, burst into violent conflict. The pro-Russian president, Yanukovych, was deposed, and fled for his life to Russia. The new government changed the laws so that Russian was no longer one of the official languages. The Donbas region was slipping into full scale war, and Russia felt compelled to act.
I am not here going to attempt a full recent history of Ukraine and their relations with Europe and Russia, but a few words are necessary to get a general understanding of the role of Crimea.
UKRAINE, THE DIVIDED
Ukraine is a divided country, with two languages, two churches, and two different directions of orientation: the western part, which largely speaks Ukrainian, identifies with western Europe; the eastern part, largely Russian-speaking, identifies with Russia.
The EU made a big push to attract all Ukraine into their sphere around 2012. It seemed like a done deal. At a certain point Russia said, ‘Ok, do what you have to do, but we must act as well.” Up to that time much of the Ukrainian economy was integrated with the Russian economy. They had an important trade relationship, and a “most favored nation” relationship with each other.
The EU was proposing that Ukrainian exports start flowing to them. They also invited Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance. Russia is unalterably opposed to the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO. They look upon that as a direct threat to their national safety. In 1990, NATO had told Russia that Ukraine would not be admitted, in exchange for the moving of nuclear weapons from Ukraine. 20 years later, they reneged.
On the economic side, Russia stated, “You are free to change your trade partners. We, of course, then must adjust. We cannot, for example, continue to sell you natural gas at below world market rates. In addition, many of your products will no longer have a guaranteed market at traditional prices.” The Russians also offered to consolidate the huge debt that Ukraine owed them.
This declaration shook the Yanukovych government, which started to back out of the deal with the EU. This infuriated the western-leaning youth who poured into Maidan Square. Eventually there was bloodshed, which lead to Yanukovych’s downfall, and civil war.
Ukraine is a region that seems in some ways to be frozen in time. The extremist clashes of the early 20th century, between Nazis and communists, are still alive there. They feed off each other. Neo-Nazis are open participants in Ukrainian parliament, and are instrumental in organizing street demonstrations. Communists are active in the breakaway “Peoples Republics” in the Donbas. The notorious pro-Russian Berkut special police were the mirror image of the neo-Nazi Azov military Battalion.
It was in this heated atmosphere that Russia made the decision to secure Sebastopol for good.
BACK TO CRIMEA
This skeletal explanation is just to provide background for the Crimea question. Crimea has a big majority of Russian-speakers, with much of the economy tied to the Russian military and commercial presence in Sebastopol.
The Russians made a decision in 2014 to turn the lease into full ownership. The Russian garrison secured the isthmus with Ukraine. There was a plebiscite organized. 95% voted to go with Russia, and Russia declared Crimea annexed.
This was what the western powers needed to re-double the economic sanctions which they already had levied on Russia. Only a handful of countries, thus far, have recognized the change in sovereignty. The move, however, is very popular by all factions in Russia, as well as in Crimea, and it seems completely impossible that Russia will change on this question.
The whole purpose of this paper is to point out the unique character of Sebastopol, and therefore all Crimea to the security and prosperity of Russia. Russia has by no means demonstrated the same needs or intentions toward the Donbas, or any other region of the world, for that matter.
One editorial note to what has so far been, I hope, a factual account:
The US keeps relations with Russia on an artificially hostile level, inventing reasons for belligerency. This policy, I believe, is dictated by the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex, which must justify its enormous share of the US budget, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the pivot of China towards capitalism.
The power of this Complex is illustrated by the total absence of the history of Crimea/Sebastopol, or any explanation of its relevance to the present crisis, in statements of US officials or in western media. This purposeful disregard of critical information is a big factor in the failure of the US public to understand this war and in the prevention of the development of warm relations between our two great nations.
