Sofi Oksanen: don’t deceive us again

Photo: Peeter Langovits

About the Baltic States, the world knows precious little – as also about Ukraine. Therefore, Russia’s agenda of questioning self-determination isn’t a task too impossible, thinks writer Sofi Oksanen.

Every morning, I wake up wondering if this is the day that Eastern-Europe is sold, again. Checking the telephone and seeing it contains no alarming messages – no good ones, either – I start the computer and scan the news headlines, all the while thinking if this will be the day, or perhaps tomorrow. The day the news of which I could only sense by focussing my mind on my own reactions and these of the world, as it is a writer’s obligation to remember the moments that the pages of history are turned. The new times are already here. The interlude between the cold wars (1989–2014) is over.

By word and deed, Russia has assured us it wants to restore her imperial glory. The interlude was just an anomaly, meaning a loss in the war. A defeat, the results of which need to be fixed. The Brezhnev doctrine is updated into the Putin doctrine. Russia thinks it justified to intervene in the matters of independent states, if these are too much turning towards the West, and if Russia thinks these states belong to her sphere of influence.

At this very moment, a law is being shaped in the Russian Duma which would make it possible to annex lands formerly occupied by the Soviet Union to Russia. In Eastern-Europe and the Baltics, people are wondering whether their hopes in the West have been in vain. The West has not made good its promises to protect integrity of borders of countries formerly under Russian power; turns out, Ukraine had no business surrendering her nuclear weapons under the Budapest Treaty. Ukraine made a mistake, hoping in the West – the West, which, over these past decades has not cared for the Eastern-Europe except for its cheap labour and production costs.

The backlash by the broke empire had already started, as Putin proclaimed the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe if the 20^th century. To fix that, among other things history is being taught correspondingly, its renewal explained with geopolitical interests. The aim of the historic narrative is to revive in Russians the national pride and to underline that the Russian Empire has had a favourable meaning for its peoples.

Former colonies beg to differ, but in the new treatment of history, facts and feelings play no role. There is no objective history, they say. All there is are ideological models, to be used to erect a patriotic firewall of Russian attitudes.

During all these years, the West has, in a friendly way, clapped hands at speeches by Putin on «development of Russian democracy». By Putin personally, the societal model has been defined as a «managed (guided) democracy». That’s no democracy; even so, the West took it as such, as the other euphemisms used by FSB aimed at placating the West, while the Kremlin clique was preparing for a brave new Putin world. The Soviet Union was rehabilitated. Becoming a journalist became a new type of suicide. As early as in 2012, Putin’s bunch begun to repatriate assets from the West, to ensure the heart of the power be independent. Te West, meanwhile, was having a nice siesta.

The basis of European Union is trying to learn something from our histories. The Eurasian Union, promoted by the Putin clique, is its antipode. It’s built on choice pieces of Stalinism and National Socialism, the propaganda doctrine of which is still being followed. That form of seizing power also has an inexhaustible budget. The English language TV-channel Russia Today was set before the Kremlin propaganda cart in 2005, its annual budget exceeding $300m. As its programme looks like news, people believe that’s what it is; all the while, RT’s chief aim is enhancing hatred towards the West, as testified by the channel’s former employees. Only during the Ukrainian crisis has the propaganda become so blatant that no attempts are made to make it more palatable for the West as before. That’s one remarkable change.

Western journalists are used to articles striving to present views of opposing parties being a drive towards the truth. That’s a wrong approach when one party is plainly lying. By thus acting, sadly the Western media is ratifying the very messages produced by the Moscow clique – hoping for these to be repeated by Western media. 

Information war is the essence of the Kremlin power, being the cheapest means to wage war and to conquer lands without opening fire from its tanks. Intimidation, provocations, projection and propaganda – this is what Kremlin excels at. With these weapons, occupation has always been justified. Justified to own citizens, and to foreigners. As also today.

The illegal annexation of Crimean to Russia carries a grand symbolic meaning: this is the first territory, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, grabbed from another independent state and added to Russia. It is also a test, by which the Kremlin is finding out about the West’s pain thresholds and morale – will the West dare to stand for its promises, or will the West once again deceive its citizens. 

Welding the Crimean peninsula, legally Ukraine’s, into Russia, went easy. The invasion cost no victims for Russia; it brought no Mothers of soldiers to the streets. And, for the West, a narrative was successfully created, according to which the conquest of Crimea was actually understandable seeing a large part of the people there spoke Russian. Most of them have come to Crimea as the result of deportations by Stalin, the shifting about of nations in order to Russify the colonies. Such areas abound in Eastern-Europe. Now, the Putin clique is using these people in its interests. The native Tatars in Crimea, who experiences Stalin’s population policy culminating in genocide, have actually already been forgotten. At the time of this writing, In Crimea the home doors of Tatars are being marked. Sound familiar?

For quite a long time already, Russia is tried to ridicule the Baltic right to independence. As early as in 2008, Putin called Ukraine an artificial state. The strategy isn’t new – this is how Hitler looked at Austria, in the 1930ies. Russia has hoisted a question mark over Ukraine’s right for integrity of its borders, by crafty lies they’ve presented Ukraine as Russians’ state just as an image was created of Austria as a Germans’ state i.e. a territory belonging to Germany.

The same kind of rhetoric, The Baltics have had to hear from Russia for a long time now. About the Baltic States, the world knows precious little – as also about Ukraine. Therefore, Russia’s agenda of questioning self-determination isn’t a task all that impossible. Russia awakened her sleeping agents in time. Over the years, the Russian so-called media has managed to write of concentration camps created in Estonia for Russians (a lie dating 2007). In the mind of the Kremlin, Finland also historically belongs to Russia. And: in a Finnish hotel, children are being stolen from Russian tourists (a lie dating 2013).

With stuff like that blasted over the air, year in year out, now wonder that large masses develop a suspicion towards the Western nations. And that’s exactly what it’s aimed at. Thus, emotionally people are mobilised for war, and nationalities formerly on friendly terms are turned against one another. To stay popular, Putin’s clique needs artificial enemies. It is needed to hang on to riches amassed by unjust means; as, losing power would minimally mean the uncovering of assets obtained by corruption. As happened to the dethroned Ukrainian president Yanukovych.

Currently, management of Russia is concentrated in the hands of a small group, the figurehead of which is Putin – the richest man in Europe and Russia. The clique’s education differs from the background of European politicians. The training of Putin’s clique comes straight from KGB and FSB. In the Russian hierarchy of power, there’s no-one higher than they. During the Soviet Union, at least the party controlled the KGB.

Should anybody still believe that the compatriots’ policy pursued by Russia is indeed motivated by a sincere concern for how Russians fare outside the motherland borders, it’s time for a little reality check and remember how Hitler made use of ethnic Germans for his own interests. Anybody that’s been to Russia knows how little Russians are cared about in Russia.

In the Kremlin, they do not like colourful revolutions; rather, they sneak corrupt Moscow-minded people into the governments of corrupt countries. While at power, Yanukovych managed to arrest historians researching Soviet era crimes, and to publish an approving view on Holodomor – genocide organised by Soviet power. The programme included restrictions on freedom of speech and any-gay propaganda. Yanukovych did the things a Moscow-minded leader was supposed to do. The people told him «no» and spoiled Putin’s long-term plan for quiet annexation of Ukraine to Russia.

Now, it’s West’s turn to say «no» to Russia’s goal to expand her power outside her borders. This cannot be done by diplomatic dialogue. A state, lying purposefully and continuously, can in no way be a partner in discussions. Russia has already shown that by playing diplomacy, they are only buying time to transport the heavier weapons to the borders.  

In the West, they have tried to understand Kremlin’s actions; even so, why bother to understand colonialism. Would we understand should Elisabeth II up and declare she wants to restore the British colonial empire in its maximal historic borders?

Should we try to understand if Ms Merkel the chancellor should threaten to restore Germany at its Hitler era heights? What if the German TV should air programmes where soft toys are preparing for war? What if Germany were lead by people educated at the Gestapo? How would it feel if, in the minds of the Germans, Hitler would be a greatest hero in their history, like Stalin is in Russia? What if Germany would claim that Europe (Gayrope, as they say in Russia) is governed by a homosexual conspiracy, as is claimed in Russian propaganda? Does anybody remember: who was it that said that Western decline was caused by Jewish conspiracy?

Nobody would stand stuff like that. All would understand that tolerance of such developments would be impossible indeed to explain to grand-children.