And what about the restoration of the territorial integrity of Russia..?

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A few days ago, after having been insultingly absent from the memorial Parade in Moscow commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, Frau Merkel again started saying something about restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

With this in mind, I want to address in this article a large pink trumpeting elephant in the room, that all but a few Western politicians are studiously ignoring:

What about the restoration of the territorial integrity of Russia?

Ron Paul noticed in one of his articles that whenever forces are set in motion to split off a bit of Russia, these forces are hailed as democratic (like it happened in the 90’s with NATO-armed Islamic terrorist insurgency in Chechen Republic), and conversely, whenever peoples try to join Russia, they get vilified and demonised. As it happened with 2.4 million Crimeans, who for their democratic choice were put under sanctions, disconnected from international payment systems, and Apple and Google closed accounts of those that have some on-line data or development.

Over the last century, Russia’s territorial integrity was violated both illegally and illegitimately on many occasions – in the North, West and South of Russia. In this article I touch upon only three cases pertaining the state, still known today as Ukraine.

In 1917 a violent coup d’etat happened in Russia. It carried many of the characteristics of what later became known as “colour revolutions” – a small minority group, financed largely from the West, carried out a “red” revolution. As the result of this coup Russia became fragmented, large chunks of it being split off. Some, like Finland and Latvia had only lose affinity to Russia (and yet, Finland chose a Russian navy flag from the time of Peter the Great as a template for their own national flag). Other, like Georgia, joined Russia of their own accord to protect themselves and enjoyed centuries of such protection, while remaining largely self-governed. And then there were integral parts of Russia, part of its heartland – Belorussia, Malorossia, Novorossia, Crimea.

The state of Ukraine, as created by Lenin in 1917, was based on the Russian land, known as Malorossia. The Malorossian dialect – known colloquially as Surzhik – differs little from Russian. There are greater differences between, say Bavarian and High German or between Oslo and Trøndersk dialects. The Ukrainian language, as we know it today, was later built by incorporating Polish and German words and artificial changes to orthography. This was the first violation of Russia’s territorial integrity in that direction.

At about the same time everything Russian was being eradicated. Even the name of the country was erased for over 70 years, being hidden behind an abbreviation RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). And it became a bad tone speaking about Russia in the USSR…

After the Civil War and Polish insurgency were subdued (we can see exactly the same events playing out today in Ukraine, as the ones happening 96 years ago), it became clear that Ukraine was not a viable state, capable of supporting itself, so Lenin ripped off additional Russian territories and transferred them to Ukraine in 1922. Novorossia had a rich industrial and agricultural potential, that fed the whole of Ukraine up until last year. These lands were collectively known as Novorossia, and consisted among other of Harkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Nikolaev, Herson and Odessa regions. People living on these territories spoke Russian, and continue to do so till this day. This was the second violation of Russia’s territorial integrity in that direction.

Incidentally, when Soviet Union was broken up in a voluntaristic way on a handshake agreement between some unelected representatives of RSFSR, BSSR and UkSSR, those territories held a referendum, voting against the break-up of USSR. In reality they voted against the physical separation by a state border from Russia – up until that point the separation was largely symbolic.

Then, in 1954, in violation of the then Constitution of USSR and of the legislation of RSFSR, Hrushov transferred Crimea from RSFSR to UkSSR. This was also done against the wishes of Crimeans. The head of Crimean Communist Party lost his position, when he tried to object, voicing the popular opinion. Still, people continued to grumble in the privacy of their kitchens along the lines of “what was that idiot Khrushov thinking, transferring Crimea into Ukraine?” I personally heard such grumblings during my summer stays in Crimea in mid-80s. This was the third violation of Russia’s territorial integrity in that direction. Luckily this violation was rectified last year, in a contrastingly democratic process. Crimeans finally, for the first time after 60 years, got a chance to express their opinion about the forced transfer into Ukraine.

For Hrushov, Crimea was the largest personal bribe given in history. It is sometimes incorrectly stated that Hrushov was Ukrainian. However, Hrushov was connected to Ukraine through his party and repression work during the Stalin era. When he chose the line of exposing of Stalin’s deeds as his election campaign line, he urgently needed his own transgressions in Ukraine to be forgotten. Ukrainian Communist Party was the most influential branch, surpassing the Russian one, so a really royal bribe was needed. Crimea became such bribe. (Can anyone imagine Obama giving one of the Hawaiian islands as a present to California so as to get political favours from the Californian rich men during an election campaign? No? Well, Crimea was such a case, and USA now vehemently defends this state of affairs.)

So, Frau Merkel, when you and your Washington masters speak about the restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity, you in fact speak of sustained and continued support for a series of illegal, violent, tyrannic, totalitarian violations of Russia’s territorial integrity. But what is new in this theatre of double standards?

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