WHAT THE US MEDIA WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT UKRAINE
Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 by Common Dreams
by Ted Rall
Armed men in military uniform walk outside a Ukrainian military unit
near Simferopol, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 2. Hundreds of armed men
in trucks and armored vehicles surrounded the Ukrainian base Sunday
in Crimea, blocking its soldiers from leaving. (Photo: Getty Images)As
usual, America’s foreign correspondents are falling down on the job.
Stories devoid of historical context cast Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
as a naked act of neo-Soviet aggression. Considering that the relevant
history begins a mere two decades ago, its omission is inexcusable.
The spark that led to the takeover of Crimea was not the overthrow
of President Viktor Yanukovich. It is what happened the day after.
A 2012 law gave the Russian language official status in regions where
Russians comprise more than 10% of the population. This is the case
in most of eastern Ukraine and particularly in Crimea, where 59%
are ethnic Russians.
One week ago, Ukraine’s rump parliament (members of Yanukovich’s
party, hiding from opposition forces and in fear for their lives,
didn’t show up) took advantage of Yanukovich’s downfall to overturn
the language law. Americans didn’t notice, but Russians did.
“Attack on the Russian language in Ukraine is a brutal violation
of ethnic minority rights,”Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign
Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, tweetedthat day.
Seems a little over-the-top, right?
Sure, but only if you don’t know that millions of ethnic Russians in
former Soviet Republics have suffered widespread discrimination and
harassment since the 1991 collapse — and that their troubles began
with laws eliminating Russian as an official language.
Laws like the one passed last week in Ukraine.
The demise of the Soviet Union left 25 million Russians stranded in
14 newly independent states, in such countries as Belarus, Azerbaijan,
Turkmenistan and Ukraine. These new countries had to scramble in order
to create the trappings of national identity virtually overnight. They
designed new flags, composed national anthems and printed new currency.
To instill a sense of loyalty and patriotism, the governments of many
of the freshly-minted republics resorted to rank nationalism.
Nationalism isn’t just about what your country is. It’s also about
what it isn’t. This requires defining some things — some people —
as outsiders. Unwanted. Scapegoats. Enemies of the state.
Turkmenistan, a Central Asian dictatorship and former Soviet
republic in Central Asia, is one example. It instituted a policy of
“Turkmenization” after 1991. Russians, a privileged group before
independence, were now refused work permits. A 2000 decree banned the
use of the Russian language in official business; since Turkmenistan
is a totalitarian state and all business is legally governmental,
this reduced Russians who didn’t speak Turkmen to poverty and
low-status jobs.
The Turkmen government abolished dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship,
leading to the mass exodus of panicked Russians in 2003.
Denaturalization — the stripping away of citizenship —
followed. “Many people…were having to sell houses and apartments at
far below market values in order to leave by the deadline,” reported
the UN. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything they owned.
“Over the past decade Russians have been systematically discriminated
against, and currently hold no positions in Turkmenistan’s government
or state institutions,” says the report.
Russians who remained behind after 2003 fared poorly. “On the
streets of the eastern city of Turkmenabat, Russians appear to be
rapidly becoming an underclass in a nation mired in poverty. Many
scrape a living as taxi drivers, waitresses or in other low paying,
insecure jobs.”
Harassment of Russians is rife throughout the former USSR. Every
other Commonwealth of Independent States nation has abolished dual
citizenship.
In the former Soviet Union, everyone knows that the road to
statelessness, unpersonhood and poverty begins with the official
elimination of Russian as an official language.
National language statutes targeted against Russian speakers are
analogous to Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, which prevented Jews from
holding jobs or even owning a radio: the beginning of the end. At
the end of the Soviet period in 1989, the Tajik SSR passed a law
establishing Tajik as the sole official language. Less than two
decades later, 85% of ethnic Russians had left the country.
“The linguistic nationalization carried out in each republic provided a
strong impetus to emigrate…Even if schools systematically introduce
children to the official language today, the [former Soviet] states
have established no programs to train adults,” Seymour Peyrouse noted
in a 2008 report for the Woodrow Wilson Institute about the Central
Asian republics. “It seems that the principal cause of emigration
remains the absence of a future, or the perception of such, for the
younger generations.”
Given recent history, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that ethnic Russians
freaked out when one of the first official acts of Ukraine’s parliament
was a linguistic nationalization law.
As for Russia’s response, you need to know two facts. First, Ukraine
isn’t as independent of Russia as, say, Poland. None of the former
Soviet republics are. “Kiev is an ancient Russian city,” Masha Gessen
writes in Vanity Fair. “It is an overnight train ride from Moscow —
closer than 90% of Russia is to the Russian capital. Russian citizens
haven’t needed visas or even foreign-travel passports to go to Ukraine
— the way U.S. citizens can enter Canada with only a driver’s license.
Every store clerk, waiter, and taxi driver in Kiev speaks Russian.”
And of course there’s the Black Sea Fleet. Really really independent
countries don’t have 11,000 foreign troops stationed on their soil.
Had it been possible for rational diplomats and demographers to manage
the Soviet collapse, Crimea probably would have wound up in Russia.
Until half a century ago, after all, Crimea was Russian. Nikita
Khrushchev “gifted Crimea to Ukraine as a gesture of goodwill to mark
the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s merger with tsarist Russia. Not
surprisingly, at the time, it did not occur to anyone that one day
the Soviet Union might collapse and that Ukraine would again be an
independent country,” writes The Moscow Times.
It’s easy to see why Vladimir Putin would invade, why Russian public
opinion would supporthim, and why neither cares what America thinks.
Back in September, after all, most Russians told pollsters Crimea is
part of Russia.
Why are American reporters covering Crimea ignoring the big picture,
and instead so focused on secondary distractions like how it makes
Obama look and whether there’s a chance of a new Cold War?
Four horsemen of the journalism apocalypse afflict overseas reporting:
Journalistic stenography, in which attending a government press
conference constitutes research.
Kneejerk patriotism, where reporters identify with their government and
are therefore less likely to question its actions, while reflexively
assuming that rivals of the U.S. are ill-intentioned.
Jack-of-all-trades journalism, in which the same writers cover too
many different beats. A few decades ago, there would have been a
bureau chief, or at least a stringer, who knew Ukraine and/or the
former Soviet Union because he or she lived there.
American ahistoricism, the widespread and widely acceptable ignorance
of politics and history — especially those of other countries.
(c) 2014 Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of the new books “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central
Asia the New Middle East?,” and “The Anti-American Manifesto” . His
website is tedrall.com.
From: Baghdasarian