RUSSIAN POLITICS IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT
The Return of the Empire: The Ukraine Crisis in the Historical Perspective
— In his speech, Vladimir Putin hailed the annexation of the Crimea—an act undertaken in
violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine, which had been guaranteed by Russo-Ukrainian treaties and
ensured by the Budapest Memorandum of 1994—as a triumph of historical justice. Much of Putin’s
argument was historical and cultural in nature.
— Russia has been waging open and hybrid wars, annexing territories, and using its virtual
monopoly on energy supplies to the countries of Eastern Europe as a weapon, the object being to
establish a much less costly and more flexible system of political control over post-Soviet space
than was available either to the Russian Empire or to the Soviet Union
— In the 1990s, Ukraine turned the Commonwealth into an instrument for a “civilized divorce”—a
term coined in Kyiv—as opposed to one for Russian control over the “near abroad.” Ukraine
worked hard to ensure recognition of its borders by Russia. In 1994, Kyiv gave up its nuclear
arsenal in exchange for a guarantee of territorial integrity and independence given by Russia, the
United States, and Great Britain
— Moscow treated Kyiv’s orientation on the West not only as a growing external danger but also as
a threat to its own increasingly authoritarian regime. As far as the Kremlin was concerned,
Ukraine’s rejection of rigged elections and resistance to a corrupt regime was setting an example to
Russia’s own struggling civil society and had to be stopped at all costs
— The current crisis in Russo-Ukrainian relations began on the night of November 21, 2013, with a
Facebook post by a Ukrainian journalist of Afghan descent, Mustafa Nayem. He was disturbed by
news that the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who had come to power in 2010, had refused to
sign a long-awaited association agreement with the European Union, which envisioned the creation
of a free economic zone including Ukraine and EU, and stipulated bringing the Ukrainian
legislation, democratic procedures and business practices in line with those of the European Union.
“Fine,” wrote Nayem in his Facebook account, “Let’s be serious. Who is ready to show up on the
Maidan by midnight tonight? “Likes” will be ignored. Only comments on this post with the words
‘I’m ready.’”
— Shortly after 10:00 p.m., he was on Kyiv’s central square, known in Ukrainian as the Maidan,
where the Orange Revolution had begun ten years earlier. About thirty people had gathered by the
time he arrived. By midnight, there were more than a thousand young, educated urbanites. For
them, the expected association agreement with the EU was the last hope that Ukraine might finally
embark on a European course of development, overcome corruption, modernize its economy, and
Page 1 of 55
,provide a decent standard of living for its people. Now, those hopes were being crushed. Nayem and
his friends could not remain silent
— President Yanukovych, for his part, had learned from the Orange Revolution of 2004 that the
sooner one got rid of protesters, the better. Thus, in the early hours of November 30, riot police
were ordered to attack the students camping on the Maidan. They did so with the utmost brutality
under the pretext of clearing the square to allow the construction of a huge Christmas tree in
preparation for New Year celebrations that were still one month away
— On February 21, 2014, EU delegates led by the Polish minister of foreign affairs, Radosław
Sikorski, negotiated a deal between Yanukovych and the leaders of the opposition. One of its
conditions was a new presidential election before the end of the year. But Yanukovych, who had no
illusions about its outcome, fled his mansion near Kyiv the same night, taking reportedly hundreds
of millions of dollars and leaving behind a private zoo and a fleet of vintage cars. The next day
parliament voted to remove him from office. He drove with his bodyguards to the Crimea, and then,
by some accounts, boarded a Russian ship to make his way to the Russian Federation, where he was
granted citizenship
— the Crimean parliament held a closed session that lacked a quorum, according to numerous
reports, and dissolved the Crimean government. As the new prime minister, it appointed Sergei
Aksenov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, which had obtained only 4% of the vote in the
Crimean parliamentary elections. On March 1, Aksenov appealed to Vladimir Putin to help ensure
“peace and order” on the peninsula. The next day, Russian military units moved out of their
barracks in Sevastopol and, with the support of troops brought from Russia, seized control of the
Crimea
— on March 18, 2014, Russia officially annexed the peninsula. In his speech on the occasion,
Vladimir Putin claimed that the Crimean referendum had been held “in full compliance with
democratic procedures and international norms.”
— Avakov, an ethnic Armenian, and Kolomoisky, an ethnic Jew, emerged as the “saviors” of
Ukraine from the Russian hybrid-war offensive, dispelling the myth of the nationalist or even
fascist leanings of the new government in Kyiv and its supporters disseminated by Russian
propaganda. By mid-May, it was clear that the Russian attempt to raise a revolt throughout
southeastern Ukraine and create Novorossiia, a state that would divide Ukraine in half and provide
the Russian government with land access to the Crimea and Transnistria, had failed
— cutting off Ukrainian channels and bombarding listeners and viewers with misinformation about
the new Kyiv government, which was called a “fascist junta,” and its plans, which allegedly
Page 2 of 55
,included the desire to ban the Russian language in the region. Viewers and listeners were promised
Russian salaries and pensions, which were significantly higher than those in Ukraine, and
citizenship either in Russia or in the new state of Novorossiia, which would include a good half of
Ukraine.
— Russian was the dominant language on the streets of the Donbas, and the local elites exploited
that fact to mobilize their electorate, claiming that the new Kyiv government was a threat to the
Russian language.
— The leaders of the Donetsk republic declared that 89% of voters favored independence, and the
corresponding figure in Luhansk was 96%, but these figures were as fraudulent as the ones released
in the Crimean referendum, and many of those who voted later claimed that they wanted broad
autonomy, not independence. The referendum took place without the presence of international
observers and was not recognized by the international community
— In July, Russian artillery and missiles began bombarding Ukrainian territory from the Russian
side of the border, and in August regular units of the Russian army crossed the border not just to
reinforce Russian mercenaries and local militias but also to take the lead in fighting the Ukrainian
armed forces and volunteer battalions.
— The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and then post-Soviet Russia all associated international
power and security with control over territories along their borders. If they could not control such
territories completely, they would partition them and control what they could.
— The “New Russia” project, launched by the Russian government in 2014, had as its primary goal
the partitioning of Ukraine and the creation of a Russian-controlled state in the southern and eastern
parts of the country. That project failed, as Russia managed to destabilize and control only a small
part of the projected state of New Russia. While the Crimea was annexed right away, the Russian
covert war in the Donbas created conditions for the establishment of another enclave of “frozen
conflict” unrecognized by the rest of the world, not unlike Transnistria on the territory of Moldova
and Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia on the territory of Georgia. These enclaves are used to apply
pressure to Western-leaning republics. Chances are that this will be the primary function of the new
frozen-conflict area in eastern Ukraine
— According to the leaked Russian documents, Russia funds and runs in military, administrative
and economic terms, the self-declared republics in the eastern part of Ukraine—an additional
burden on the struggling Russian economy. In Ukraine, the cost is calculated not only in money and
resources, but also in human lives. The war has claimed more than 9,000 dead and at least twice as
Page 3 of 55
, many wounded. Millions left the conflict zone, creating a refugee crisis in Ukraine that dwarfs the
current refugee problem of the European Union.
— What is at stake in the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict is much more than the future of the
Donbas. Even after the loss of the Crimea and the de facto loss of much of the Donbas, Ukraine is
still the second-largest post-Soviet state in territory, population and economic potential. Russia’s
current involvement in the Middle East notwithstanding, Moscow’s geopolitical priority today and
in the foreseeable future will remain the post-Soviet space.
— The Ukrainian crisis reminded the world once again of the importance of the United States as a
major stakeholder in European security and prosperity—the role it played for most of the twentieth
century.
— . But historical contextualization of the current crisis suggests that Ukraine’s desperate attempts
to free itself from the suffocating embrace of its former master have a much greater chance of
success with strong international support. The goal should not be to move Ukraine from one sphere
of influence to another but to reject imperial and postimperial forms of domination, which should be
relegated completely to the past, where they belong.
O’Keeffe, B. (2023). The Multiethnic Soviet Union and its Demise. Bloomsbury.
Lecture 1:
Connecting Threads:
— Understanding the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War: the course offers various analytical
perspectives (historical, geopolitical, normative, sociological)
— The role of the past: as a politically intrumentalized myth or narrative, as a set of constraining
circumstances (path dependency, institutions), as real memories that guide (ordinary) people’s
behaviours
— Formal institutions and ‘high politics’ in parallel to informal
Page 4 of 55
The Return of the Empire: The Ukraine Crisis in the Historical Perspective
— In his speech, Vladimir Putin hailed the annexation of the Crimea—an act undertaken in
violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine, which had been guaranteed by Russo-Ukrainian treaties and
ensured by the Budapest Memorandum of 1994—as a triumph of historical justice. Much of Putin’s
argument was historical and cultural in nature.
— Russia has been waging open and hybrid wars, annexing territories, and using its virtual
monopoly on energy supplies to the countries of Eastern Europe as a weapon, the object being to
establish a much less costly and more flexible system of political control over post-Soviet space
than was available either to the Russian Empire or to the Soviet Union
— In the 1990s, Ukraine turned the Commonwealth into an instrument for a “civilized divorce”—a
term coined in Kyiv—as opposed to one for Russian control over the “near abroad.” Ukraine
worked hard to ensure recognition of its borders by Russia. In 1994, Kyiv gave up its nuclear
arsenal in exchange for a guarantee of territorial integrity and independence given by Russia, the
United States, and Great Britain
— Moscow treated Kyiv’s orientation on the West not only as a growing external danger but also as
a threat to its own increasingly authoritarian regime. As far as the Kremlin was concerned,
Ukraine’s rejection of rigged elections and resistance to a corrupt regime was setting an example to
Russia’s own struggling civil society and had to be stopped at all costs
— The current crisis in Russo-Ukrainian relations began on the night of November 21, 2013, with a
Facebook post by a Ukrainian journalist of Afghan descent, Mustafa Nayem. He was disturbed by
news that the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who had come to power in 2010, had refused to
sign a long-awaited association agreement with the European Union, which envisioned the creation
of a free economic zone including Ukraine and EU, and stipulated bringing the Ukrainian
legislation, democratic procedures and business practices in line with those of the European Union.
“Fine,” wrote Nayem in his Facebook account, “Let’s be serious. Who is ready to show up on the
Maidan by midnight tonight? “Likes” will be ignored. Only comments on this post with the words
‘I’m ready.’”
— Shortly after 10:00 p.m., he was on Kyiv’s central square, known in Ukrainian as the Maidan,
where the Orange Revolution had begun ten years earlier. About thirty people had gathered by the
time he arrived. By midnight, there were more than a thousand young, educated urbanites. For
them, the expected association agreement with the EU was the last hope that Ukraine might finally
embark on a European course of development, overcome corruption, modernize its economy, and
Page 1 of 55
,provide a decent standard of living for its people. Now, those hopes were being crushed. Nayem and
his friends could not remain silent
— President Yanukovych, for his part, had learned from the Orange Revolution of 2004 that the
sooner one got rid of protesters, the better. Thus, in the early hours of November 30, riot police
were ordered to attack the students camping on the Maidan. They did so with the utmost brutality
under the pretext of clearing the square to allow the construction of a huge Christmas tree in
preparation for New Year celebrations that were still one month away
— On February 21, 2014, EU delegates led by the Polish minister of foreign affairs, Radosław
Sikorski, negotiated a deal between Yanukovych and the leaders of the opposition. One of its
conditions was a new presidential election before the end of the year. But Yanukovych, who had no
illusions about its outcome, fled his mansion near Kyiv the same night, taking reportedly hundreds
of millions of dollars and leaving behind a private zoo and a fleet of vintage cars. The next day
parliament voted to remove him from office. He drove with his bodyguards to the Crimea, and then,
by some accounts, boarded a Russian ship to make his way to the Russian Federation, where he was
granted citizenship
— the Crimean parliament held a closed session that lacked a quorum, according to numerous
reports, and dissolved the Crimean government. As the new prime minister, it appointed Sergei
Aksenov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, which had obtained only 4% of the vote in the
Crimean parliamentary elections. On March 1, Aksenov appealed to Vladimir Putin to help ensure
“peace and order” on the peninsula. The next day, Russian military units moved out of their
barracks in Sevastopol and, with the support of troops brought from Russia, seized control of the
Crimea
— on March 18, 2014, Russia officially annexed the peninsula. In his speech on the occasion,
Vladimir Putin claimed that the Crimean referendum had been held “in full compliance with
democratic procedures and international norms.”
— Avakov, an ethnic Armenian, and Kolomoisky, an ethnic Jew, emerged as the “saviors” of
Ukraine from the Russian hybrid-war offensive, dispelling the myth of the nationalist or even
fascist leanings of the new government in Kyiv and its supporters disseminated by Russian
propaganda. By mid-May, it was clear that the Russian attempt to raise a revolt throughout
southeastern Ukraine and create Novorossiia, a state that would divide Ukraine in half and provide
the Russian government with land access to the Crimea and Transnistria, had failed
— cutting off Ukrainian channels and bombarding listeners and viewers with misinformation about
the new Kyiv government, which was called a “fascist junta,” and its plans, which allegedly
Page 2 of 55
,included the desire to ban the Russian language in the region. Viewers and listeners were promised
Russian salaries and pensions, which were significantly higher than those in Ukraine, and
citizenship either in Russia or in the new state of Novorossiia, which would include a good half of
Ukraine.
— Russian was the dominant language on the streets of the Donbas, and the local elites exploited
that fact to mobilize their electorate, claiming that the new Kyiv government was a threat to the
Russian language.
— The leaders of the Donetsk republic declared that 89% of voters favored independence, and the
corresponding figure in Luhansk was 96%, but these figures were as fraudulent as the ones released
in the Crimean referendum, and many of those who voted later claimed that they wanted broad
autonomy, not independence. The referendum took place without the presence of international
observers and was not recognized by the international community
— In July, Russian artillery and missiles began bombarding Ukrainian territory from the Russian
side of the border, and in August regular units of the Russian army crossed the border not just to
reinforce Russian mercenaries and local militias but also to take the lead in fighting the Ukrainian
armed forces and volunteer battalions.
— The Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and then post-Soviet Russia all associated international
power and security with control over territories along their borders. If they could not control such
territories completely, they would partition them and control what they could.
— The “New Russia” project, launched by the Russian government in 2014, had as its primary goal
the partitioning of Ukraine and the creation of a Russian-controlled state in the southern and eastern
parts of the country. That project failed, as Russia managed to destabilize and control only a small
part of the projected state of New Russia. While the Crimea was annexed right away, the Russian
covert war in the Donbas created conditions for the establishment of another enclave of “frozen
conflict” unrecognized by the rest of the world, not unlike Transnistria on the territory of Moldova
and Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia on the territory of Georgia. These enclaves are used to apply
pressure to Western-leaning republics. Chances are that this will be the primary function of the new
frozen-conflict area in eastern Ukraine
— According to the leaked Russian documents, Russia funds and runs in military, administrative
and economic terms, the self-declared republics in the eastern part of Ukraine—an additional
burden on the struggling Russian economy. In Ukraine, the cost is calculated not only in money and
resources, but also in human lives. The war has claimed more than 9,000 dead and at least twice as
Page 3 of 55
, many wounded. Millions left the conflict zone, creating a refugee crisis in Ukraine that dwarfs the
current refugee problem of the European Union.
— What is at stake in the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict is much more than the future of the
Donbas. Even after the loss of the Crimea and the de facto loss of much of the Donbas, Ukraine is
still the second-largest post-Soviet state in territory, population and economic potential. Russia’s
current involvement in the Middle East notwithstanding, Moscow’s geopolitical priority today and
in the foreseeable future will remain the post-Soviet space.
— The Ukrainian crisis reminded the world once again of the importance of the United States as a
major stakeholder in European security and prosperity—the role it played for most of the twentieth
century.
— . But historical contextualization of the current crisis suggests that Ukraine’s desperate attempts
to free itself from the suffocating embrace of its former master have a much greater chance of
success with strong international support. The goal should not be to move Ukraine from one sphere
of influence to another but to reject imperial and postimperial forms of domination, which should be
relegated completely to the past, where they belong.
O’Keeffe, B. (2023). The Multiethnic Soviet Union and its Demise. Bloomsbury.
Lecture 1:
Connecting Threads:
— Understanding the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War: the course offers various analytical
perspectives (historical, geopolitical, normative, sociological)
— The role of the past: as a politically intrumentalized myth or narrative, as a set of constraining
circumstances (path dependency, institutions), as real memories that guide (ordinary) people’s
behaviours
— Formal institutions and ‘high politics’ in parallel to informal
Page 4 of 55
