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Essays on Russia and East-Central Europe Since World War Ii

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Essays on Russia and East-Central Europe Since World War Ii A Difficult Neighbourhood ESSAYS ON RUSSIA AND EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE SINCE WORLD WAR II A Difficult Neighbourhood ESSAYS ON RUSSIA AND EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE SINCE WORLD WAR II JOHN BESEMERES Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Besemeres, John F., author. Title: A difficult neighbourhood : essays on Russia and East-Central Europe since World War II / John Besemeres. ISBN: 9781760460600 (paperback) 9781760460617 (ebook) Subjects: Russia--Relations--Europe, Eastern. Europe, Eastern--Relations--Russia. Russia--History. Europe, Eastern--History. Poland--History. Dewey Number: 327.47 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph: Line of protesters at Dynamivska str. Euromaidan Protests. Events of 20 January 2014, by Mstyslav Chernov. Available at: commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/User:Mstyslav_Chernov. This edition © 2016 ANU Press CES Prize This publication was awarded a Centre for European Studies Publication Prize in 2015. The prize covers the cost of professional copyediting. Contents List of maps . ix Acknowledgements . xi Introduction: Reclaiming the Empire . 1 Part 1. Twentieth-century Poland: War and Cold War 1 . Seven days that shook the world . 31 2 . A difficult neighbourhood . 37 3 . Jan Karski’s valiant failures . 49 4 . The worst of both worlds: Captain Witold Pilecki between Hitler and Stalin . 63 5 . Speaking truth to power and prejudice . 79 Part 2. Poland and Russia since the fall of communism: Drawing apart 6 . Poland/Russia: Peace or ceasefire? . 91 7 . Heading west, heading east: Impressions from Warsaw and Moscow . 111 8 . Poland at the polls: A win for pragmatism . 129 9 . Poland’s EU presidency: Drawing the short straw . .. 135 Part 3. Turning points in Ukraine and Belarus 10 . Ukraine: A sharp turn eastwards? . 141 11 . In Belarus, the leopard flaunts his spots . 167 Part 4. Russia and the former Soviet republics: Putinisation at home and abroad 12 . Russia and its western neighbours: A watershed moment . 181 13 . Russia’s elections: Leaving little to chance . 201 14. Putin’s Ceauşescu moment ...........................207 15. Setbacks at home, successes abroad: The mixed fortunes of Vladimir Putin .............................219 16. Putin’s phoney war ..................................229 17. Re-enter Putin, weakened and resentful. .239 18. The real Mr Putin stands up ...........................245 19. Towards a greater Putistan? Part 1. .255 20. Towards a greater Putistan? Part 2. .269 21. Will Putin survive until 2018? ..........................285 22. Putin’s re-Sovietisation project and the Ukrainian jewel .......297 23. Vladimir Putin: Geopolitical wrecking ball .................303 24. Putin’s annus mirabilis ...............................307 Part 5. Putin reverts to cold war: Changing the shape of Eurasia 25. Putin’s last territorial demand ..........................329 26. Ukraine: Time to cut a deal? ...........................335 27. Russian disinformation and Western misconceptions ........355 28. Putin’s parallel universe ...............................381 29. Putin’s Westpolitik: Back to the USSR ...................401 30. Peace in our time ...................................421 31. Ukraine conflict exposes esternW weakness on Russia ......437 32. Bling and propaganda in an ethics-free zone ..............443 33. Making nice and making enemies .......................451 34. Ukraine, out of sight .................................459 Select bibliography ......................................475 Further reading .........................................493 Index ................................................507 Map 1: Russia and its western neighbours. Source: CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. List of maps Map 1: Russia and its western neighbours. ...................vii Map 2: Ethno-linguistic map of Ukraine. ...................142 Map 3: The South Caucasian states: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.. 322 ix Acknowledgements After more than 50 years of viewing Russia and Eastern Europe from different vantage points – academia, government service and living in or visiting the region – like any honest author, I should begin by conceding that a huge amount of such wisdom as I’ve accumulated is borrowed. Footnotes and bibliographies are a form of very partial acknowledgement, but the debt is essentially undischargeable. Nonetheless, I would like to pay tribute to a few of my more recent intellectual creditors. But first I would like to warmly thank the staff and members of the Centre for European Studies at The Australian National University for their hospitality over the period in which these essays were being researched and written. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Jacqueline Lo, the Director of the Centre, and Dr Annmarie Elijah, the Associate Director, for their encouragement and support, including through the award of the ANU CES Publishing Prize. The Centre provides a relaxed and stimulating environment for research, and its staff members and visiting fellows past and present have contributed a great deal to maintaining that atmosphere. I thank them all. In addition, the Centre hosts a large number of academic visitors every year, many of whom have had impressive expertise relevant to the subjects touched upon in these essays. I owe a very great debt to Associate Professor Kevin Windle, who read the manuscript at an advanced stage, making many invaluable suggestions on structure and presentation, as well as detailed content. With his remarkable knowledge of the languages, literatures and history of Europe, especially Russia and Eastern Europe, Kevin was the ideal consultant and adviser. xi A DIffICUlT NEIGHBoURHooD Justine Molony and Mary Besemeres also read the entire manuscript, and very closely. With heroic patience they endured my serial cyber- mishaps, repairing their ravages with precision and great competence. I would also like to thank most warmly Emily Tinker and her colleagues at ANU Press; and Jenny Sheehan and colleagues at CartoGIS, ANU, for the maps. I am deeply grateful to them all. None of the above, nor indeed anyone else, should be held responsible for bloopers of any kind that I have managed to slip past them. Among the people who have helped me to diagnose trends and assemble facts and arguments relevant to this book, I would particularly like to thank Kyle Wilson, David Wall, Bobo Lo, Stephen Fortescue, Robert Horvath, Peter Rutland, Csaba Nikolenyi, Marko Pavlyshyn, Igor Melchuk, Peter Reddaway, Bob Miller, Peter Browne, Martin Krygier, Janek Pakulski, Seweryn Ozdowski, Chris Cviić, Peter Hill, Saša Pavković, Stefan Markowski, Nina Marković, Halyna and George Koscharsky, Marek Heleniak and Genrikh Salata. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Anna Wierzbicka, whose extensive knowledge and love of things Russian as well as Polish have taught me much over decades, and continue to save me many a google. She introduced me to a circle of remarkable and lifelong Polish and Russian friends, with whom any conversation was always a pleasure, as well as a seminar. xii Introduction: Reclaiming the Empire This book is not a history of Russia’s relations with the former vassal states on its western borders. Most of the essays are snapshots taken between 2010 and 2016 that attempt to present some of the key developments in their interactions as they occurred. In addition, there are some more historical reflections on Poland’s experience of German and Soviet dictatorship in the bloodlands1 during World War II, and its efforts to escape Moscow’s legacy and integrate with Western Europe thereafter (Chapters 1–9). The historical chapters offer background to the story of Russia’s recent efforts under President Putin to revive its imperial glories, and why those efforts are usually stoutly resisted by former subject nations, many of which have been through experiences not dissimilar to Poland’s. From Chapter 10 on, the story of Russia’s domestic evolution and its relations with its former subjects in Eastern Europe unfolds more or less chronologically. Already from the early 1990s there were growing intimations of Russia’s unhappiness with the post-1991 security settlement in Eurasia. The political class had assumed that they would enjoy early prosperity, full acceptance by the Western powers and a seamless 1 See Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010). Snyder’s book encapsulates something that Western observers often overlook about the extent to which Eastern Europeans (including the western former republics of the USSR) were the victims of the brutal and brutalising effects of three successive invasions by the vastly superior forces of two of the world’s most sanguinary dictatorships in the twentieth century, Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany. Angered by his treatment of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since early 2014, Russian propaganda has begun to target Snyder as an archenemy, wheeling out against him such distinguished historians as the pristine American Stalinist, Grover Furr. For Furr’s views, see Ekaterina Blinova, ‘Who controls
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