NOVOROSSIYA,
UKRAINE & CRIMEA
BY GAITHER STEWART
30
September, 2014
Novorossiya
map. A highly strategic region., key to many powers to this day.
It
has been said that a nation is simply the spiritual body that a
people acquires during the course of its history.
Novorossiya or
New Russia, so absent in mainstream media and so present in
alternative news sources today, is popularly believed to be a
fleeting matter, simply a new name created ex-novo for effect by the
local militias of southeastern Ukrainians today fighting and
defeating the Ukrainian regular army troops invading their
territories. In doing so the people of Novorossiya are also
shattering the dream of American President Obama. The truth is the
people of this region are closely linked to the history of their
lands.
According
to Alexander Zakharenko, field commander and Prime Minister of the
Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR) in southeastern Ukraine speaking at
a recent press conference, invaders from West Ukraine run or
surrender at the first shot. The American-financed troops,
conscripted by force by the puppet state in the Ukrainian capital of
Kiev, simply don’t measure up to the warriors of the southeast
Ukraine who are defending their lands, their cities and villages, and
their families. The point is that the regular army troops are
demotivated and scared and want to return to their homes in West
Ukraine. Besides, many Ukrainian soldiers do not want to shoot at
their fellow countrymen. Therefore they either desert to the
so-called Separatists of the DPR, or flee.
People
following the US-instigated attack on the now adequately armed and
experienced militias of the Donetsk and Lugansk peoples’ republics
by troops of the American puppet regime installed in Ukraine after
the illegal overthrow of the legal government and “regime change”
in Kiev will be surprised to learn that Novorossiya has been the name
of the territory north of the Black Sea for over 200 years, long
before the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Since Tsarist Russia
annexed the area following the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War in
1774, the area has been known as Novorossiya. Already in the late
18th century Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, even some Italians, and a
mishmash of other peoples colonized the region and established major
cities such as beautiful Odessa and Donetsk, now the capital of the
Donetsk Peoples’ Republic.
Time
passed. Situations altered. Much happened in this area between the
Crimean War (1853-55) and today: western interventions in Russia,
Nazi Germany’s invasion and defeat in WWII, Cold War, sanctions
against Russia in these days, and the West’s unconcealed envy of
Russia’s space, one-sixth of the Earth’s surface and its natural
resources.
In
the historian’s eyes the history of Western relations with Russia
has continuously repeated itself since the 1800s into the 1900s and
the 2000s. These repetitions, for example the tradition of Allied
interventions in Russia, are not the most inspiring aspect of what
has happened time and again in our world. A Russian cultural
historian, Vladimir Weidlé, whom I once interviewed in Rome, said
that the “Slavic-Orthodox world would never be that of
Roman-Germanic Europe” because their respective heritages at the
outset were so different. He claimed there was not just one Europe,
but two Europes, disunited but as strange one to the other as the
Arabian world from the world of China.
This
division between USA/West Europe and Russia amounts to an absolute
schism. That schism has apparently fostered, on the one hand,
jealousies and envies one for the other. On the other hand the schism
has strangely created a sense of superiority in West Europeans and
Americans vis-Ã -vis Russia. A missionary kind of zeal infects the
USA to stamp out the heresy of Socialism in the neocon view still
alive in Russia, which, in turn, is the “infection” that has
prompted some of the western military interventions in Russia.
For
three centuries the West has assaulted Russia with regularity, in
almost 50 year intervals, always seeking to contain her, conquer her,
occupy her, exploit her and above all destroy her.
However,
the reality is that Russia is not Oriental, but also part of Europe,
in this case however, a Europe of the East. Despite Arab influences
in Europe, Cervantes, Weidlé noted as an example, was not a Moor,
nor Pushkin a Mongol. In the same manner the centuries of Tartar
occupation of Russia, likewise Lenin with his face of Mongolian cast
was not a Tartar. Nonetheless, today Russia’s eyes have turned
eastwards because of pressures from the West.
Still,
the geographical situation of Russia has pointed the path of its
expansion and the very shape of the empire, but not the
direction its cultural development has taken. Weidlé believed that
the invasion of Russia by Asian Tartars changed the very roots of
Russia, yet such non-European elements do not really belong to her
history but to the raw materials of her nature. The Russian language
shows certain analogies to the languages of Turco-Tartary; but
Russian developed from Greek, to which was added the influence of the
literary languages of Western Europe. The Asiatic influences that
appear from time to time in Russia have thus far been fleeting. Here,
again, its geographical position on the map assumes important
historical importance.
When
Tsardom finally collapsed in the early 20th century, it had crushed
one revolutionary movement after the other during most of the
19th century. Trotsky wrote in his autobiography, My
Life,
that “the best elements of that generation went up in the blaze of
dynamite warfare” (that is, in the blaze of revolutionary
terrorism). Tsardom fell to continuing revolutionary fever
spread throughout Russia and to the pressures of WWI and the huge
losses Russia suffered. In fact, it was the very force of the history
of European capitalism and the Russian Revolution that changed
everything in Russia.
Stamp
commemorating Kruschev’s role in giving Novorossiya to the Ukraine.
In
1918, the region of Novorossiya—where battles between local
militias and regular Ukrainian army troops have raged since last
May—was incorporated by the new Soviet government into Russia,
which eventually transferred the territory to the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic. It was a purely administrative move, for it
changed nothing since the Ukraine then was an integral part of the
USSR. Then following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the term
Novorossiya began to be used again in calls for the independence of
the region, including the rich Donbass with its great Russian
majority corresponding to the historical area of Novorossiya in
today’s southeastern Ukraine. (The map accompanying this piece
shows clearly the Novorossiya borders on Russia and the Crimean
peninsula recently annexed by Russia.)
It
must be kept in mind that the borders of the Russian world extend
significantly farther than the borders of the Russian Federation.
There is Russia and there is also “Greater Russia” in the same
manner as our big cities today consist of the city proper and the
surrounding metropolitan areas. For example there is Paris—the city
proper—and Greater Paris, including regions extending in all
directions far from the Place de la Concorde.
As
an example of Greater Russia, in a 1994 interview, the head of the
separatist state of Socialist/Communist, Russian-speaking
Transnistria, a breakaway state from Moldova, also bordering on
Novorossiya, said that that state was “an inalienable part of the
Russian state’s southern regions”, including also the city of
Odessa, the Crimea, and other Ukrainian oblasts, all of which were
collectively part of the historical Novorossiya region. Dmitry Trenin
of the Carnegie Moscow Center wrote that in 2003 some Russian
academics had again discussed the idea of a pro-Russia Novorossiya
state being formed out of southeastern Ukraine as a response to the
US Drang
Nach Osten—including
its desire to bring Ukraine into NATO and the occupation of areas
bordering Russia.
The
former Russian Empire was ultimately vanquished by history. Then also
the USSR collapsed because of the economic pressures from the
capitalist West during the Cold War, especially the intentional
dislocations brought about by the constant arms race.
Today,
the self-declared Federal State of Novorossiya is a confederation of
the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.
Though internationally unrecognized, both are breakaway states
claiming independence from Ukraine. The envisaged extent of the state
will most likely one day encompass not only the Ukrainian
administrative areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, (in Russian, Lugansk),
but also the present Ukrainian cities and surrounding areas of
Kharkov, Kherson, Odessa, Zaporrizhi and Dniepropetrovsk as well as
the Russian-speaking Transnistria Republic. All of these areas which
the USA/NATO threatens border with Novorossiya.
The
Cold War, and its consequent bloated defense spending due to the
US-imposed arms race, was an extraordinary burden on the Soviet
economy. It stunted its ability to “deliver the goods”, the
fruits of revolution to the ordinary citizen, thereby “proving”,
as the Americans claimed, that socialism was inferior. It
eventually contributed greatly to the USSR’s implosion.
The
Novorossiya territory is internationally considered as sovereign
territory of the Ukrainian state. Western media write of a
southeastern Ukraine run by “terrorists” and moreover backed by
the great “Satan” of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Despite Washington’s
frustration because of the failure to bring Ukraine into NATO, its
neocons remain intent on intervening in Ukraine against Russia,
subduing the Novorossiya independence movement, and placing US/NATO
Lily Pad-style military bases along Russia’s borders.
THE
CRIMEA
On
a trip backwards through the events of over 150 years we arrive at
the Crimea recently annexed by Russia and the Crimean War fought by
Russia against the intervention of the first major coalition of
Western powers in alliance with the Ottoman Empire to attack Russia.
No one should believe easy accusations of Russian guilt in the
Ukraine crisis. Western intervention against Russia is an old story.
A tradition that has continued until today.
Russians
had inhabited the territory of southeastern Ukraine between the state
of Ukraine and Crimea in the 19th century, shortly after the Crimean
War (1853-55) which, by the way, some historians call the real World
War I. Also those Russians of the 19th century referred to their home
territory as Novorossiya, New Russia.
The
descendants of those first colonists in Novorossiya in today’s
southeastern Ukraine have declared their independence from the
Ukraine of the West and its capital of Kiev and established the
“Donetsk Peoples’ Republic”. Last May it joined with the
“Lugansk Peoples’ Republic” to form a new Novorossiya as a
confederal “Union of Peoples’ Republics”. The lands of
Novorossiya are rich in natural resources—light and heavy industry,
minerals and agriculture—and borders on both Russia and on the once
again Russian Crimean peninsula and other Russian lands such as
Transnistria quite near Odessa.
Who
today knows much about the almost forgotten Crimean War? In fact that
war is often confused with the second Allied Intervention in Russia
against the new Communist regime, just the memory of which triggers
knee-jerk reactions in Western capitals, especially in Washington
where many people and their leaders tend to think of Russians as
Communists who fall outside the New World Order. The very idea of
Novorossiya constitutes a menace to US strategy for world hegemony.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 while the new regime was
struggling for its very survival, the Russian Civil War broke out
which pitted the reactionary and privileged Whites—who in general
favored the ancien
regime of
the Tsars—against the Bolshevik-led Reds. The already difficult
situation of the revolutionary forces was then further complicated by
the second Allied intervention in Russia within a century.
So
here a few words about the Crimean War are in order. The Crimean War
began as another of the series of 19th century wars between the
crumbling Ottoman Empire on the one hand and an expansive Russia
seeking an exit from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean on the
other. The key part of that war began in September 1854 when the
coalition of Britain, France, the Ottomans and later the small
Kingdom of Sardinia, the core state of the future Italy, landed
troops in Russian Crimea located on the north shore of the Black Sea.
As
the historical name indicates, most of the war was fought in Crimea.
The Allies began a year-long siege of the Russian fortress of
Sevastopol. However, besides Sevastopol, the Anglo-French fleet
attacked areas on the adjoining Azov Sea and in the Caucasus. In a
forgotten part of the forgotten war, the Allied fleet, obsessed with
the destruction of the Russian navy, sailed also to the Baltic Sea to
attack the proudest bastion of the Russian Bolshevik, the seaport of
Kronstadt near St. Petersburg and to destroy the Russian fleet
stationed there. Three British warships then left the Baltic for the
White Sea where they spread destruction. Naval skirmishes also
occurred in the parts of the Far East where the Anglo-French naval
force besieged Russian forces and attempted a land invasion around
the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The
major Crimean battle fought at Balaclava in the Crimea was
commemorated by the great English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, in
his The
Charge of the Light Brigade which,
by the way, school children in Great Britain often learn by heart.
Tennyson’s poem, published in December of 1854 in The
Examiner first
praises the bravery of the Brigade:
“When
can their glory fade?
O
the wild charge they made.”
At
the same time the poet then mourns the futility of the charge, the
futility of war in general:
“Not
tho’ the soldier knew
Someone
had blunder’d.
Finally,
on September 11, 1855, the Russians blew up their forts and sank
their ships and evacuated Sevastopol, defeated by western armies.
They had won the battle of Balaclava but lost the war.
Concerning
the causes of the Crimean War, British historian A.J.P Taylor notes
that there were deeper causes than blocking Russia’s historical
need for an exit from the Black Sea through control of the strait
Dardanelles strait near Istanbul:
“The
Crimean war was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither
Nicholas of Russia nor Napoleon III of France nor the British
government could retreat in the conflict for prestige once it was
launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of
Russian security; Napoleon III needed success for the sake of his
domestic position; the British government needed an independent
Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean….Mutual fear,
not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean war.”
In
the eyes of some historians the major point is that the Allies fought
the Crimean war not in favor of the Ottoman Empire, “the sick man
of Europe”, but against Russia. Britain feared Russia would
modernize its navy and threaten British naval supremacy in the world
and was intent on giving Tsarist Russia a lesson. The war might have
ended earlier but war fever had been whipped up by the press in
Britain and France so that politicians were afraid to propose ending
the war.
But
with the passage of time public sentiment in Britain changed to
anti-war, and France which had suffered major casualties wanted
peace. The signing of the Treaty of Paris brought an end to the war
but not to Western hostility to Russia. The Black Sea was
demilitarized, which weakened Russia, no longer a naval threat to
Britain. Sevastopol and other occupied cities were returned to Russia
which however had to give up some of its Danubian principalities and
its aspirations to unite with its Slavic cousins in Bulgaria and
Serbia still under the yoke of the Ottomans.
TSARIST
RUSSIA
Meanwhile
in Russia great events, world-shaking events, were taking place. Yet
for Russia the two preceding centuries of her history were more
tragic than glorious. The history of the now more than two centuries
was marked by the mingling of Russia and the West, above all by the
drive of the West into Russia which ended in the many Western
interventions in Russia several of which, as we have seen, were armed
interventions that in the long run aimed at the total conquest of
that new world. Weidlé notes that though Russia’s history had been
full of movement, rich in events and achievements, it had never
solved the problem of the integration of the various social groups
into a common life. This integration, by the way, was also lacking in
ancient Russia, in the new Soviet Russia and again today in a new
Russia. Yet Russia attained a blend of order and disorder that
fostered the normal development of a nation. In Russia that blend led
directly to the Great Russian Revolution, perhaps because of the
degree of those old separations of the masses from the hierarchy of
the elite. Western observers have noted how in Russia the governing
class and the people seem quite distinct. In fact, there have
traditionally been two cultures in Russia: that of a very small elite
and that of the masses, which lasted until the revolution and the
enormous changes it wrought. When thinking of the Russian revolution,
you should keep in mind that, desirable or not it eliminated the old
elite and formed a new one.
In
the decades following the Crimean War revolutionary fever was growing
in Russia. Finally Russian Socialists and Social Revolutionaries led
the 1905 revolution that forced Tsar Nicolas to grant the
establishment of the Duma,
a legislative assembly, which marked the start of a kind of
Constitutional Democracy and weakened the total power of the Tsarist
regime. It seemed that Russia was truly destined to be part of
Europe. Trotsky notes that despite the counter-revolution, an
industrial boom came in 1910 and with it the strikes. The shooting of
workers in 1912 gave rise to protests all over the country and by
1914 beautiful St. Petersburg had become an arena of workers’
barricades. It has been said that governments come and go but the
police (soldiers too) remain. Moreover, policemen are conservatives
because of the nature of their work. Trotsky knew that new ideas (he
was referring to Socialism) always come early.
In
reference to the 1917 revolution Trotsky wrote a paragraph that
reminds me of Giordano Bruno four centuries earlier, which, I
believe, is well worth quoting. I made a very few cuts for purposes
of brevity:
Marxism
considers itself the conscious expression of the unconscious
historical process. But the unconscious historical process, in the
historico-philosophical sense of the term, coincides with its
conscious expression only at its highest point, when the masses break
through the social routine and give victorious expression to the
deeper needs of historical development. At such moments the highest
theoretical consciousness of the epoch merges with the immediate
action of the oppressed masses that are furthest away from theory.
The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one
usually calls ‘inspiration’. Revolution is the inspired frenzy of
history.
In
fact, as Trotsky had predicted there began a series of mutinies in
the navy and the army. During the revolution, every fresh wave of
strikes and of the peasant movement was accompanied by mutinies in
all parts of Russia. Already during the revolution some Western
Ukrainians became aware of the dangers to the central government in
Kiev of the movement for Donetsk separatism from the Ukrainian state.
The Novorossiya idea had never died.
UKRAINE
– A People but No Nation
Ukrainian
Prime Minister Arseny “Yat” Yatsenyuk announced to a conference
of European politicians meeting in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev that
“Putin wants to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation and
restore the Soviet Union.” He added that his country is in a state
of war and that Putin is the aggressor. “Putin’s aim is not just
to take Donetsk and Lugansk. His goal is to take the entire Ukraine.
Putin is a threat to the global order and to the security of Europe.”
Yat does not want Russian to become the second state language. He
wants European Union membership for Ukraine and opposes Ukrainian
membership in the new Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and
Russia, which Yatsenyuk believes would mean the restoration of the
Soviet Union, albeit in a slightly different form and name. He
accuses Russia of wanting to construct a new Berlin Wall, this time
on the western border of Ukraine and the European Union. Before
Russia annexed the Crimea, Yatsenyuk said the decision of Ukrainian
membership in the European Union should be decided by referendum.
Ukraine
watchers were taken by surprise when Russian President Vladimir Putin
used the term “Novorossiya” to refer to some regions in
southeastern Ukraine: Kharkiv, Luhansk Donetsk and Odessa. “They
were not part of Ukraine in Tsarist times, they were transferred in
1920. Why? God knows.” His idea could have been to ready Ukraine
for absorption of those territories into Russia. At the same time
“Novorossiya” is also the slogan of pro-Russia activists in
southeastern Ukraine where people are chanting the Novorossiya theme.
Such an event today would devastate the already shaky economy in Kiev
with no money in its coffers. After all irredentism is the effort to
reunify lost territories inhabited by ethnic kin with territories
also inhabited by ethnic kin. Most certainly the USA, the EU and the
IMF would not consider bailing out a country much, much worse off
than was Greece. And if came down to the wire, sanctions and
resolutions would not stop the unification of areas of ethnic
Russians in Novorossiya, or the Transnistria republic and most likely
also the whole of Moldova.
As
efficacious and unifying as the word “Novorossiya” and its very
conception are for ethnic Russians in southeastern Ukraine today, it
is a foul and loathsome term for the phantasmal and already
disintegrating puppet government and its adherents in Kiev—as well
as for Washington, the EU in Brussels and the morally corrupt
International Monetary Fund. But only a minority of Americans as well
as most of Asia and Africa are even aware of what has happened here:
that the USA instigated and organized a coup against the legally
elected President of Ukraine and then sent Ukrainian troops to the
southeastern part of the nation, where the local militias have beaten
the shit out of the regular troops from Kiev. Few people even know
the name of Novorossiya and its significance as explained here. As
Pope Francis said in a recent sermon, that war in general is pure
madness. Yet, he added, the world is unfortunately infected with what
he called “the globalization of indifference”
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