Samuel Bendett muses (without endorsement) that eastern Ukraine represents “the ideal laboratory for a New-Soviet project” after reading an opinion piece by geopolitical commentator Vadim Dubnov:
In Crimea, pro-Russian fervor was already widespread, but in Donetsk and Luhansk, it was necessary to develop a new line of political thought in order to create in the regions’ pro-Russia citizens a desire to “Save the Soviet Union.” And while it was never clear why the Russians should rejoice in Transdiniestria’s separation from Moldova, or that of Abkhazia from Georgia, everything has come together in Ukraine – the ideal laboratory for a neo-Soviet project.
Dubnov writes that Kiev offered two ideal conditions for the experiment:
“Everything that happened in the Ukraine was inspired by the West, and the only language that can describe what happened is the language of the Great Patriotic War (WWII).”
Moscow has openly stated that the Ukrainian government and its armed forces are inspired after the anti-communist and anti-Soviet guerrilla formations that officially sided with invading Nazi Germany against Moscow. “The battle for Ukraine is a continuation of the Soviet military doctrine, considered defensive at that time, and whose legacy was supposed to have been the establishment of sovereignty doomed to failure in places like Abkhazia and Transdnistria.”
As the Bendett notes, Vladimir Putin has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” I’d note three more things:
• The Soviet Union was really just the Russian Empire with a new name and a new justification.
• It took centuries to piece together the Russian Empire, but only about a decade for the Soviet Union to unravel.
• Today’s Russia doesn’t have centuries, which might entail some hasty actions on the part of the current leadership.
This is a shaky time to be anywhere in Russia’s Near Abroad.
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