Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
March 15 2005

Russia’s Wounded Imperial Consciousness
By Victor Yasmann

Whither the CIS?

Many observers in Russia and abroad believe that recent events in
Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova have rung the death knell for the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the fragile association
that rose up in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Council for Foreign and Defense Policy Chairman Sergei Karaganov told
RTR on 13 March that the CIS has essentially fulfilled its function
and should be radically reformed. On 10 March, apn.ru reported that
National Strategy Institute Director Stanislav Belkovskii had called
for “burying the CIS” and creating a new alliance of countries loyal
to Moscow. Belkovskii dubbed this alliance the USSR, an acronym from
the Russian words for “Commonwealth of Countries Allied to Russia.”

The latest reflection of this new mindset in Russia was a proposed
bill in the Duma that would have regulated the procedures for
expanding the Russian Federation. On 10 March, Motherland Duma Deputy
Andrei Savelev presented the bill on the creation of new constituents
of the Russian Federation that would have amended a 2001 law on the
Russian Federation (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” 3 December 2001) to
facilitate the incorporation into Russia of the self-proclaimed
republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are part of Georgia;
the Moldovan region of Transdniester; and the Nagorno-Karabakh region
of Azerbaijan.”Now is not the time to think about how to break up
other states but to take care about the unity and sovereignty of our
own country.”

Under the 2001 law, regions wishing to join the federation do not
have to share borders with Russia, but the consent of their present
central governments is required for incorporation. The law also
stipulates that acceptance of new constituents of the federation must
be approved by a referendum of the entire country. In short, the
expansion of the Russian Federation requires an international treaty
and a complete, national domestic political process.

According to media reports, the amendments submitted by Savelev were
drafted by Motherland faction leader Dmitrii Rogozin. They called for
abolishing the requirement that expansion be accompanied by the
consent of the foreign government involved, “Izvestiya” reported on
10 March. Instead, the proposed amendments stated that admission to
the federation would be based only on “the will of the people of a
region as expressed through a referendum” or by the mass acceptance
of Russian citizenship. The only new condition that the amendments
included was a provision that said the population of a candidate
region must have voted “positively on the 17 March 1991 referendum on
the preservation of the USSR.” All of the regions listed above pass
this standard, a fact that Rogozin mentioned in a memorandum he
attached to the bill. In that message, he wrote that Georgia,
Moldova, and Azerbaijan “have lately been intensifying efforts to
project their sovereignty into the territories of these unrecognized
republics” while simultaneously accusing Russia of “supporting
‘separatism.'”

When presenting the bill in the Duma, Savelev stressed that the
proposals correspond with the Kremlin’s political line and its
“ideology of national revanche.” “President [Vladimir] Putin said
last year that we gave up too much and [now] we must get it all
back,” Savelev said, according to strana.ru on 11 March. “We do not
need a new Russia of ‘Yeltsinites’ within the present borders, but a
genuine Russia with its imperial borders.”

The Motherland bill, however, attracted just 91 votes — mainly from
Motherland and its allies — of the 226 required for passage.
Thirty-four deputies voted against the bill and one abstained, with
most deputies not participating in the vote. The pro-Kremlin Unified
Russia party, which controls more than 300 votes in the lower
chamber, declined to support the bill, arguing that it could destroy
“the fragile balance of the territorial integrity of the Russian
Federation.”

Unified Russia’s position seems to follow the old dictum that those
who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Deputy Yurii Konev
(Unified Russia) said: “The time for this law has passed. Now is not
the time to think about how to break up other states but to take care
about the unity and sovereignty of our own country,” strana.ru
reported on 11 March.

Konev’s concerns were echoed by Communist Deputy Leonid Ivanchenko,
whose faction largely supported the measure. Ivanchenko, however,
argued that the definition of “a popular referendum” in the bill
“works against Russia’s interests.” He noted that the Myasnikovskii
Raion of Rostov Oblast, which is in the district he represents, has a
compact Armenian community, RTR reported on 12 March, and that it
could theoretically vote to secede from Russia. First Deputy Duma
Speaker Lyubov Slizka (Unified Russia) concluded the debate by saying
that “adoption of the bill will mean the de facto declaration of war
against neighboring states, whose territorial integrity will be
violated.” She added that it would be another matter if one or
another of these regions gained international recognition and then
expressed the desire to join the Russian Federation.

In an interview with “Argumenty i fakty,” No. 10, TV-Tsentr
commentator Aleksei Pushkov, whose statist views often reflect those
of the Kremlin, said that Moscow is afraid to encourage separatist
claims in Georgia and Moldova because it faces the same problem in
Chechnya. Moreover, if Moscow legitimizes the disintegration of
Georgia and Moldova, it could set off a chain reaction in Ukraine and
Kazakhstan, both of which have large ethnic Russian minorities
concentrated in regions bordering Russia. “It seems that the Kremlin
is seriously afraid of complications in our relations with our
neighbors, although as far as I can tell there is nothing to be
afraid of,” Pushkov said.

The introduction of the bill in the Duma indicates that those in
Russia who harbor imperialist ambitions are not yet ready to
surrender, despite the recent setbacks throughout the CIS. After
Moscow’s defeat in the Ukrainian presidential vote, political
consultant Marat Gelman, who advised pro-Moscow presidential
candidate Viktor Yanukovych in the election there, said that “Russia
should now give up its imperial project,” RosBalt reported on 29
December. “But although there is no chance of realizing any scenario
of the restoration of the empire, our wounded imperial consciousness
remains and is posing a serious problem.”