Transnationalism

"Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about inspite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name." William Morris

Following the collapse of the Soviet union 25 million ethnic Russians outside the borders of the Russian Federation within a year during 1990 were faced with no homeland identity crisis. Nearly three quarters of all Russians living in the non-Russian republics considered USSR their homeland. Russians immigrated to the independent states of central Asia, namely transcaucasia and the Baltics, became diasporic community while loosing their role of imperial periphery and were reduced to second class citizens – unwanted immigrants. 6 millions immigrated to the Russian Federation during the 90s, exercising their rights under the new country’s nationality law to assume Russian citizenships. Russian’s nascent democracy has seen national obsession with ethnic country men to become a political battle ground in regional elections, with candidates attempting to outmanoeuvre each other to appear more “protective” of the countrymen in neighbouring states, and at the federal level Russian Foreign Policy is increasingly tied to the condition of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the newly independent States. The use of proxy politics – that is, the representation through outside parties – conducted through Russian foreign policy stands as a key mark of distinction for this immigrant group.

This trend has had implications not only for bilateral relations with the newly formed states of Eurasia, but also for Russia’s relationship with the EU and even its budding friendship with the US. In the Baltics, Russia is relentless in applying pressure through international organisations, trade, and security relationships to ensure better treatment of its country men in Estonia, Latvia and to a lesser extent Lithuania. Most Russians have left transcaucasia as a result of untenable social, political and economic conditions, including ethnic conflict and chronic unemployment, but those who remain receive substantial financial support for cultural institutions and education from Russia’s Duma. The Russian Federation has demonstrated strong support for two break away republics, Abkazia in Georgia and the Slavic republic of transdniestria in eastern Moldova, prompting difficulties with a host of states concerned about the stability of south-eastern Europe and the Caucasus. In central Asia, questions regarding the Russian population increasingly provide fodder for resuming Russian hegemony over, if not outright political domination of, its southern neighbours. Russia’s interest in the Russian populations of Kazakstan, Uzbek and Kyrgysistan serves as an integral part of what is referred to as the Russian Monroe Doctrine. Despite the involvement of Moscow in the internal affairs of the newly independent states and the diaspora’s use of proxy politics, it is now abundantly clear that the dire predictions of violent ethnic conflict, separatist struggles, etc. of many political scientists and politicians are not coming true.

Russia has effectively employed its diasporas as a mechanism to reassert hegemony in its borderlands, often putting the people there in direct confrontation with their states of residence over issues of national security. Diasporic Russians, how ever have seen few discrete benefits from this flurry of activity and recent polls show they are growing resentful of Moscow’s meddling in their relations with their states of residence (Barrington et al. 2002). Yet as ties between the federation and the other former soviet republics grow, they are well placed to take advantage of the situation as an increasingly transnational group, belonging neither wholly in Russia nor outside of it. That being said, any appearance of symbiosis at this point is largely illusory – the relationship as it stands favors only the Russian Federation.

For Russians in the states where they represent a substantial percentage of the population (Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia), the communities are relatively contiguous with the Russian nation residing in the federation. In other states (Georgian, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, etc) Russians are generally located in metropolitan areas and lack contiguity with the rest of the Russian nation. Therefore, the Russian Diaspora after 1991 shares spatial distribution patterns with both the contiguous imperial German and Austrian and far flung colonial British and French examples.

There has been a spectrum of responses to the presence of Russians in the newly formed states that make up the post-soviet space of Eurasia. In the Baltics-Estonia and Latvia in particular – nationalizing states disenfranchised the Russians with stringent citizenship requirements, including historical residency conditions (typically stipulating that an individual or his or her forebears had to be living in the prior to soviet annexation in 1940), language proficiency, loyalty oaths and other bench mark, which many Russians are unable or unwilling to meet. In case of Estonia, the law on Alians (1993) went beyond simple disenfranchisment and implied as least to the Russian government that Russians and other non-citizens maybe subject to expulsion in the future. Beyond denial of citizenship, the Russian community complains of loss of jobs, in ability to travel abroad, attempts at forcible assimilation, and calculated policies intended to provoke people into emigrating (Laitin 1998). Thus Russians who form majorities in many areas of these states (upwards of 95% in some localities) are now stateless people without the ability to vote for their leaders or run for office, and whose guarantee of basic human rights within their state of residence remains tenuous. In many transcaucasian and central Asian successor states, Russians and other nationalities are barred from political organisations based on ethno-national affiliation. Kazakhstan where Russsians account for nearly a third of the population and Georgia where Russians represent only a tiny minority have both taken this approach. Therefore, however, a number of political parties in Khazakstan that are exclusively Russian in composition but even these groups despite the fact that hey are “playing by the rules”, are often denied ballot space by the Kazakh authorities. In the singular case of Moldova, popular support for unification with neighbouring Romania spurred a virulent reaction among the Slavic residents located predominately in the eastern part of the country.

Economically weak and politically stunted, the newly independent states along Russia’s southern border are in extricably tied to Moscow whether they like it or not. Geopolitics dictates that, if these states engage in nationalizing that smacks of ethnic cleansing or apartheid vis a vis the Russians, the federation’s reaction will surely be swift and unkind. The case of transdniestria remains a complicated and destabilizing influence on the Black sea region. More than a decade after open conflict subsided it lacks recognition from it neighbours n d international community. The Russian Federation remains ensconced in the affairs of the troubled region, yet seems to offer little in the way of solutions.



International migration and the globalisation of domestic politics, edited by Rey Koslowski, Routledge Research in transnationalism, series editor: Sleven Vertovec, Oxford Univ, 2005

Geopolitical traditions, edited by Klaus Dods a nd David Atkinson, Routledge Publishing, 2000