The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Khrushchev had once been the Party boss in Ukraine, and this led to conjecture that he wanted to give the republic a lavish gift—or, conversely, that he was atoning for the sins committed there (he had taken charge after the man-made famine of 1932-1933, but plenty of blood had been shed on his watch). Harvard historian Mark Kramer has suggested that Khrushchev used Crimea to secure control over Ukraine after the war. Soviet Ukraine had been occupied by the German army for nearly three years. The postwar division of Europe allowed the Soviet Union to keep most of the territory it had annexed under the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. What was now the western part of Ukraine had thus been occupied three times: by the USSR in 1939, by Germany in 1941, and again by the USSR in 1944. Soviet rule there was new and uncertain, making the division between the newly occupied western lands and the eastern part of the republic all the more pronounced. Adding ethnically cleansed Crimea to Ukraine may have been a colonizing strategy: the republic gained nearly a million new residents, all of them Russian-speaking ethnic Russians.¹⁵

Back in 1954, most Russians had no reason to wonder about Khrushchev's motives. For one thing, most acts of the Soviet leadership appeared arbitrary to the citizens and, for another, this one made no difference in everyday life. Russians continued to think of Crimea as their country's most important resort, and to use it. Crimea, in its way, was an equalizer: someone who came from extreme privilege, like Seryozha, spent his summers in an elaborate castle there while Masha's mother could rent an apartment in season

and Lyosha's mother could rent a bed for herself and one for her son. Every Russian story began in Crimea: it was the place where childhood friendships were struck, romances were kindled, virginity was lost, drugs were tried, and all sorts of memories were made. Those who had not yet spent a summer there thought that someday they would. It was the universal Russian aspiration. The realization that the all-Russian summer dream could belong to someone else— another country—came rudely in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ethnic Russians still made up the majority of the population there, but now they used a different currency and Russian citizens needed foreign-travel passports to enter. Over the years, many Russians discovered that the Black Sea resorts of Bulgaria and Turkey were more comfortable and more affordable, but Crimea remained the symbol of summer and youth.

On March 18, two days after the Crimea referendum, Putin gathered members of both houses of parliament as well as governors and other dignitaries in the Kremlin for an extraordinary address. He spoke for more than forty minutes. He was interrupted repeatedly by applause and by standing ovations. At the end, Putin and three representatives of Crimea—one of them wearing a thick black turtleneck sweater, as though he had just returned from an imaginary Spanish Civil War—signed a treaty conjoining Russia and Crimea, and the men and a few women in the room stood up to the sounds of the Russian national anthem. As Putin and his cosigners exited, the room erupted in yet another standing ovation, and a chant: Spasibo! —"Thank you!"—Spasibo! Spasibo! Spasibo!

It was a chant one might have heard at the end of a rock concert. The roomful of officials was responding not as it might have to a leader who had led the country to victory—that chant would have been "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"— but, in keeping with the "mafia state" model, as it would to a patriarch who had just given members of his clan a grand gift.

Putin's speech laid out Russia's case for Crimea. His first argument was historical, and it echoed every other historical claim to territory ever made. Putin said that Crimea was the cradle of Russian civilization (much like Serbia had always claimed that Kosovo was the

cradle of its civilization). He acknowledged the ethnic cleansing of Crimea, sort of:

Yes, there was a time when Crimean Tatars, like some other peoples of the USSR, were subjected to injustice. I'll say one thing: millions suffered from repression in those times, and most of those people

were, of course, Russian.¹⁶

This was not true of Crimea, but the statement was factually accurate for all of the Soviet Union, if for no other reason than that ethnic Russians far outnumbered all other groups. Through this rhetorical sleight of hand, Putin dismissed the pain and fears of Crimea's ethnic minorities and repositioned Russians as the victims:

What had seemed impossible became a reality, alas. The USSR

collapsed And it was when Crimea suddenly turned out to be