Part I — Deep History
“Russia is a great power, and the West has forgotten this fact…”
This piece is the first installment of the Open Rehearsal Project, a collaboration with The Big Roundtable and Medium. We’re inviting you to follow along as a story comes to life. In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about my time reporting on the crisis in Ukraine, while posting exchanges with editors, and having a dialogue with you, the readers. Find out more about the project here, and sign up to watch the rest of the story unfold…
“Russia is a great power, and the West has forgotten this fact,” Tanya tells me.
We were having lunch in the corner of a second-floor cafe near the Moscow conservatory where she teaches piano; I had just returned from Crimea after a month of reporting on the Ukrainian crisis. Tanya is a decorated artist, and her eyes dance when she speaks of the Russian soul. That day, she wore gold wireframe glasses, a thin gold wrist watch, and bangles of deep maroon. That day, she was defiant, uncharacteristically so: “There’s a line you cannot cross. There’s only so much disrespect any person, any country can tolerate. Ukraine is ours. They are our people. Our family. You cannot come into someone else’s home, put down your suitcase, and start telling them how to handle their family. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine — it’s all one place. It’s thousands of years of collective history. It’s religion, it’s culture, it’s tradition. Thousands of years back to Kievan Rus. Thousands. What does America know, you’re what, a few hundred years-old?”
This is a Ukrainian story, but it’s not really about Ukraine, not really about soldiers and seizures and referendums. The cold rationality of geopolitics has no place here. This — the precipice that the world is teetering on — is about identity and memory and (deep) history. This is a story about the Russian Empire.
Outside Crimea’s Parliament, in the shadow of a gold-domed church and a WWII memorial, I found people spray painting silver hammers-and-sickles onto red flags. Locals hung a homemade banner on the base of a retired tank at the center of the monument: “Hands off our history! our memory! our pride!” A diminutive older woman, Lyudmila, led the operation, laying out the backdrops and admonishing the younger men around her: “Spray! Spray faster! Don’t dawdle!” She had on white gloves, a red headband over her white hair, and a red and white “RUSSIA” tracksuit made by Bosco (official clothing provider of Sochi 2014). She looked like a mascot for the Babushka All-Stars. “Today is a historic day, a historic day,” she told me, before yelling at a Cossack for missing a spot.
The money behind it all (as I heard often during those weeks, “there is always money behind it all”) turned out to be a slick local politician from the city of Kursk in Crimea’s neighboring Russian region of Krasnodar. He stood out in a neatly pressed suit, and handed out glossy fliers with a letter to the people. It read, in part, like this:
“Residents of multiethnic Crimea!
Ukrainians, Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Russians, and many others!
In the distant Soviet times, there were not divisions based on nationality, we were all brothers!
Time passed and divided us into different governments, but we, Russians, still believe and will believe that no matter what, we are one whole, we are one big family!… And if you ask for our help, we will fulfill our brotherly duty and help you!
Russians do not abandon their own!
The Western press doesn’t support us, but when have they supported us? Yes, and do we even need their help and approval?!… If a Russian says that the long-term fate of the Crimean peninsula and its residents is all the same to him, he is lying. Undoubtedly, every Russian will say without hesitation that he would be incredibly happy if we become one big country!… And what of a crew of American and pro-American politicians? They’ll be thrown onto the trash heap of history. The world will remember him only as the first African-American President of America, and nothing more.
But these events will be called significant in the history of the world, and will surely receive their section in the ‘textbook of political history.’ And, most importantly, the battle for self-determination and the beginning of a new life in Crimea will be noted in the history of great and glorious Victories…”
For Russia, the Ukrainian question is one of origins. In the twenty-three years since the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia has been struggling to forge a new identity, to identify a new national idea. What does it mean to be Russian, to be Russian now, absent Tsarism or Socialism or the culture of Tolstoy? What these recent events make clear is that for Russia, Empire is an existential need. Russia cannot be merely a country; it must influence others in order to justify its prodigy. And at the heart of this Russian imperial project lies Ukraine. For Putin, the answer to why Russia exists lies in the Dark Ages when pagan princes roamed these lands. In what may turn out to be the most most important speech of his political life — a ‘Putin Doctrine’ for Eurasia, if you will — he said, “Crimea speaks of our shared history and pride. This is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptised. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”
South of Sevastopol, not far from what’s left of Khersones, Russian and Ukrainian military bases chicken poxed the hills. Sometimes their walls nearly intersected, sometimes you saw old Russian license plates behind Ukrainian gates. Before, it did not matter — they were all of one strain. I met this Colonel named Laptev at one of the Ukrainian spots. His post had been surrounded by Russian forces for days: a green KAMAZ transport truck idled outside the entrance and seven or so guys in fatigues and masks meandered, looking bored with AKs slung across their shoulders. They did not answer questions, but did let us through the checkpoint to see Laptev. He, in turn, led us through the halls, pointing to overturned cabinets as signs of “full blockade position.” He sat us down in his office — a narrow room with only a single bed and a dilapidated desk — and began briefing as if it was real, as if all of this was really happening. Well, he said, we’ve got some dynamite ready. He fished out a backpack — it could’ve been the faded Jansport I wore to the first grade — and revealed a stack of explosives. We’re ready, he said, see? Look — and here he stopped… Why? No one ever thought it could come to this, no one ever thought we would be poised to fight Russia. Why would our brothers do this?
Prince Vladimir consolidated his rule over the eastern Slavic lands in the late 10th century. His father, Svyatoslav, had been killed by Pecheneg nomads along the Dnieper River; legend has it that the Pechenegs made a gold-plated goblet of Svyatoslav and drank from his skull. Prince Vladimir, in turn, was a ruthless warrior who came to power as a zealous pagan. He erected an idol of Perun, God of Thunder, outside his castle in Kiev. The idol’s body was wooden, its head silver, and its mustache gold; Vladimir’s subjects sacrificed their sons and daughters at its feet. For years, Vladimir was a womanizer — “insatiable in vice” — with five wives and 800 concubines. In 986, a procession of guests began arriving, proselytizing the world’s major religions. First came the Muslim Bulgars, according to the Primary Chronicle, Kievan Rus’ foundational text. They said that Mohammed demanded circumcision and abstinence from pork and wine in this life in exchange for “complete fulfillment of carnal desires” in the next. Vladimir rebuffed their offer: “Drinking is the joy of the Russes. We cannot exist without that pleasure.” The Germans arrived next, preaching the teachings of the Pope, but to no avail. Then came the Jews. They too were turned down. Vladimir saw the loss of Jerusalem as evidence of God’s abandonment: “If God loved you and your faith, you would not be thus dispersed in foreign lands. Do you expect us to accept that fate also?” Finally Vladimir received a Greek scholar, who dismissed the other faiths and promoted his own Orthodoxy. He enraptured Vladimir, telling the history of the world, from creation to its present day. The Prince was so taken that he sent scouts out to observe the rites and rituals of these various religions. Predictably, they came back with tales of the Greeks’ preeminence: “On earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.” In 988, Vladimir accepted baptism and married the Byzantine Emperor Basil’s sister, Anna, in a church in a Greek town called Khersones on the southwest coast of what we now call Crimea…
