Today I want to talk about Crimea.
The accession or annexation of Crimea was a turning point in Russia’s modern history.
Late 00th/early 10th was an extraordinary time.
Russia just got out of the crisis, there was a restorative growth.
Dmitry Medvedev, who was the President at that time, was talking about freedom, liberalization, and humanization.
Skolkovo, nanotechnology, lectures, and modern art.
Marat Gelman and Artemy Lebedev went to Perm, where governor Chirkunov was building a “cultural capital”
and was even succeeding in it.
You may not believe me, but it was a thing — not every governor was a joke.
People were visiting Perm to have a look at figures of red men.
Barack Obama visits Moscow, heads of Foreign Ministries of Russia and the USA shake hands to “reboot” our relations.
Year, Russia was a corrupt second world country, but was obviously moving in the right direction.
I wanted to develop, to be appealing.
Not only they didn’t try to crush the internet, the internet and IT was everything.
There were no blockings, and all charts showed that Russia was ahead of the USA in freedom on the internet.
The first signs that Russia would reverse its politics came in 2012, when Putin returned to the president’s chair.
2012 began with mass protests, I even gave a speech on one of them.
Us, young people, are being told by our teachers, in universities, at schools, at home,
by our parents, grandparents, friends, that everything is cemented and everything is bought and sold,
that nothing can be done, don’t listen to them, it’s not true. If i did it, everyone can.
It was at a meeting on Novy Arbat, there were mass meetings for free elections in the beginning of that year.
But after Putin’s inauguration we immediately saw criminal cases at massive scale,
severe restriction of freedom of assembly, and a first law that allowed the blocking of websites at will.
2012 was the year of “Pussy Riot case”, the Magnitsky act, when we started to see “Russia” and “Sanctions”
in one sentence, it was the year of “Dima Yakovlev law”
(the idiotic ban for US citizens to adopt children from ophranages in Russia).
2013 was the first year after the global crisis when there was no growth in the economy.
The first year of spending cuts, the first year that Putin’s prolonged rule was already affecting the incomes of citizens.
By the end of that year, protests in a neighboring country resulted in revolution.
Russia’s President’s ratings were falling, and deposing a president for corruption, incompetence,
and dictatorial tendencies was a hint of the future for him.
In these circumstances the usual propaganda, the endless search for “spiritual bonds”
and “internal enemies” wasn’t enough.
Even the expensive and beautiful Olympics couldn’t do it, a “big victory” was required.
What do authoritarian leaders do when they see that their ratings are going down?
They start a small victorious war, they play the patriotism card, they tell their citizens
that the scenery behind your window might not look nice and your salary might be too low,
but everyone fears us and we’re a great nation.
It’s easier for TV to tell you that than to tell you that your salaries are high when in reality they aren’t.
Thus Putin decided to annex Crimea.
This is a touchy subject in our society, even 6 years later.
And unfortunately it will remain so for a very long time.
The accession of Crimea changed our lives greatly, the West began to see us as a threat, our economy suffered,
for 6 years now citizens of Russia have to pay for it and will keep doing it for years that will follow.
Whenever there is a discussion about Crimea, those who support its ascension usually point out that historically
it was a Russian territory and that people of Crimea wanted to return to Russia.
The first argument is difficult to argue with —
true, Crimea entered the Russian Empire back in the times of Catherine the Great,
then it was inherited by the Soviet Union, and only in 1954 Khrushchev transferred it
to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
So even if by some measure Crimea was Russian for like forever, but by law, in 1954 it became Ukrainian,
which was later solidified, which we’ll talk about too.
But what Crimeans wanted is a different matter.
The fact that they always wanted to join Russia isn’t argued even by people with pro-ukrainian views.
It just so happened that we all accepted it as an axiom.
But if you dig a little deeper it turns out that that conviction is a result of manipulative Russian propaganda,
which ingrained that thought into our minds, as well as into the minds of some Crimeans and even some Ukrainians.
When I was studying at Glasgow University, we had a subject called Public Policy.
At one lecture we were told about different methods that governments use
to suppress public discussion and promote a certain decision.
One of them is called fake consensus.
The government says “there’s nothing to discuss,
we can all see that everyone agrees with it” and just makes the decision.
It’s this method that was used by Russian authorities when they annexed Crimea.
And that fake consensus still holds: back then, the authorities convinced everyone
(residents of Crimea, Russians, and even many of Ukrainians) that people of Crimea wanted to join Russia.
They supposedly voted for it at the referendum.
Of course that thesis is nothing but lies invented by propaganda.
Let’s figure out how they managed to convince us of that lie.
Here I’ll go back a bit and remind you how the problem of Crimea appeared.
As I've already said, in 1954 the region of Crimea entered the Ukrainian Republic.
It was mostly a formality really, it was just easier to control that territory this way,
it had more connections to Ukrainian SSR than to RSFSR.
After the collapse of the USSR, Crimea was in a weird situation: it was a part of Ukraine,
but most of its population were ethnic Russians, and in addition the Black Sea Fleet
of the Russian Federation was based in Crimea.
The question of the status of Crimea was a matter of discussion throughout the 90th,
there were even clashes in which Russian militaries were involved, but the peninsula remained Ukrainian.
In 1997, Russia and Ukraine signed the Treaty of friendship, cooperation and partnership,
and pledged to respect each other’s territorial integrity, and in 2003 they signed a treaty of national borders,
which solidified the territorial affiliation of Crimea to Ukraine.
In the end of 2013 a confrontation broke out in Ukraine between pro-Russia forces and supporters of eu integration.
As a result, in February of 2014 Yanukovich, who was seen as a Russian henchman, left the country.
The supporters of the eu integration were, among others, supported by radical nationalists,
and many Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine and people who supported Russia,
which there were always many of in Crimea and in the East, saw them winning as a threat.
In these circumstances, Pro-Russian forces came to power in Crimea, and they were supported by Russia.
At first Putin denied the presence of the Russian military in Crimea, but later he admitted it.
Just visit any store and you can buy all kinds of uniforms.
Were those soldiers Russian or not?
They were local militia.
Of course, it’s a fact that we never tried to hide, our military blocked the armed forces of Ukraine stationed in Crimea.
It was these circumstances in which the referendum was held that resulted
in Crimea and Sevastopol are back to their native harbor.
We say “referendum”, but it was nothing but mockery — there were all the visible signs of a referendum,
but no expressing the will of the people happened.
Let’s figure out what was wrong with it and why we can’t just say that the people of Crimea wanted
to join Russia and voted for it at the referendum.
First thing: the whole “referendum” only took 10 days.
Quite literally, only 10 days passed from the announcement of the referendum on 6 of March of 2014
to the voting date on 16 of March.
I mean, a Referendum implies public discussion.
How can you possibly discuss anything in 10 days? How is it even possible?
For instance, by Russian law you need to announce a referendum for the inclusion
of one village into another 45 days in advance.
If it’s an entire region, it’s 60 days.
Referendum for the independence of Scotland that took place in the same 2014 was announced 547 days in advance.
The reason for that is to let people campaign for and against a proposed decision.
So that they could discuss all the dangers of one choice or another, weigh the risks
and figure out how it would influence their lives.
What can you influence and assess in 10 days?
At best you can carry out a formal procedure for calculating the current opinion of citizens on some issue.
But even that has not been done.
No one bothered counting votes at the “referendum”, the results were just announced
according to pre-written numbers, and had nothing to do with the contents of ballot boxes.
It’s quite normal for elections in Russia, especially in certain regions.
Alexander Kireyev, an expert on electoral geography, wrote about this, i’ll leave a link below to his post about it,
because it’s difficult to immediately understand all this, so better take a look at the post.
Kireyev noticed that in Sevastopol, the results were surprisingly round figures.
There, the turnout was 89.5%.
What is a turnout?
It’s the number of people who voted divided by the total number of potential voters.
Divide 274101 by 306258 and we get 0.895000.
Exactly 89.5%. It’s the same thing with votes for accession: divide the number of people who voted for it
(262041) by the total number of participants (274101) and you’ll get 0.956 — 95.6%.
Such surprising accuracy, down to a man, plus or minus just one person and you wouldn’t get such round figures.
It can be explained by either an extraordinary coincidence or by the fact that first the percentages were written,
and then the absolute figures were adjusted to match.
And look, there is no such accuracy when it comes to votes for Ukraine:
9250/274101=0.033746 whatever well let’s say many many digits and it won’t be a round figure.
You get it right?
They only had directives from above regarding turnout and votes for accession,
the other numbers were just calculated and left as is so they weren’t such nice round figures.
In Sevastopol they wrote numbers into the protocol without any connection to what was in the ballot boxes.
Such a manipulation, if you can even call it manipulation,
since you don’t even bother to count votes and just write whatever result is wanted by the higher ups,
was possible because there were practically no independent observers at the referendum.
Many international organizations and leaders of most countries refused to acknowledge the legitimacy
of the referendum and to send observers.
That is, there were observers from the West, but many of those who received an invitation
were representatives of far right and radical parties who supported Putin’s politics.
But there were independent Russian reporters who worked at polling stations and reported fraud.
Ilya Azar, who worked as a reporter for Dozhd back then, and Ekaterina Vinokurova,
who worked for Znak.com, told how at polling station 08001 in Simferopol
they were refused to be present during the counting.
Members of the electoral committee told them that according to a provisional regulation
only members of the committee coul be present during the counting of votes.
Well of course why would you want anyone watching you when you’re falsifying the results of a vote.
After that, the journalists were expelled from the premises by militia with the support of a police squad.
Here we’ll pause for a non-commercial announcement about a project of mine.
ANNOUNCEMENT
The regulation on the all-Crimean referendum proclaimed the right of citizens of Ukraine registered in Crimea
to “freely and comprehensively” discuss the issue of the referendum,
its possible consequences, to campaign for or against the issue of the referendum.
In reality however the agitation was one-sided:
all around Crimea there were billboards on which the peninsula in the colors of the Russian flag
was put against bloody-red Crimea behind bars, with black swastika at the center.
Besides, all Ukrainian television channels were disabled in Crima, but Russian broadcasts went on.
Another important point, the voters had no option to leave everything as is.
Let's have a closer look at the questions that were put on vote.
In the ballot paper we can see an option “join Russia” and another option “return to 1992 constitution”.
There was no option to “leave everything as it is”
No one asked people if they wanted to have the status of Crimea changed at all.
And the reason for that is clear — many would vote for stability, not for change.
There are always people who always vote for the status quo.
But now that they had to choose between one change and another it was a different matter.
And what’s most important, there were Russian troops present during the referendum.
They blocked Ukrainian military units, took control of strategic objects, of local administrations,
including the Supreme Council and the Council of Ministers in Simferopol.
The voting in the Supreme Council to initiate the referendum and to appoint
a new leadership for the Republic was held under pressure —
Igor Strelkov later said that he himself, leading a group of militia, was forcing deputies into the hall by force.
Unfortunately I saw no support from the authorities in Simferopol, I was there, and I didn't see it.
Militia had to gather the deputies.
To force them into the hall and vote, what can I say?
So, what was that, is that what you call a referendum, the will of the people?
And even before the announcement of the “referendum” the Supreme Council,
under supervision of Russian soldiers, “elected” a new governor of Crimea, Sergey Askyonov.
The man was a leader of “Russian Unity”, a party which won 4% of votes in the elections into the Supreme Council in 2010
which speaks volumes about what the people of Crimea thought about accession into Russia in peacetime,
they had it in their party program.
I hope these arguments were enough for you to agree that whatever happened there, it wasn’t a referendum.
But what about the desire of the people of Crimea to return To Russia —
maybe they wanted it after all, so who cares about some formalities?
Usually at this moment there is always someone, we always have a lot of them in the comments, who says:
“I was in Crimea and saw it all with my own eyes, or i know people
who were there and they all say that people wanted the accession”.
Well what can i say, I saw with my own eyes how in the 2016 elections into the State Duma everyone voted for Yabloko.
Everyone I knew voted for Yabloko, every poll in the internet favored Yabloko.
And no one I knew voted for United Russia.
It’s the same Illusion.
The explanation is simple: the people around us tend to share our own views.
Those who talk about how the people of Crimea were unanimous in their desire to join Russia,
were probably among those who supported the accession and only saw people like them.
Plus, when a referendum is carefully supervised by the military,
you don’t expect civilians to stand up against it, unless we’re talking about an occupation
that is completely unacceptable to them.
And those were Russian troops, they weren’t seen as a potential threat.
Those who don’t care, don’t talk.
And those who strongly opposed it, like the leader of Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzhemilev,
weren’t allowed to agitate and were excluded from debates.
Another argument to support the theory of “the people of Crimea wanted it” is
that there were no protests against the results of the referendum.
Well that’s true, there were no mass protests, even though Crimean Tatars tried to stand up against it.
But the only thing it means is that people weren’t opposed enough to risk their lives over it.
They were surrounded by well-armed soldiers.
They acted politely and even earned the name of “polite people”,
but they were armed people without insignias who pretended to be militia.
For the people of Crimea, they were either their fellow countrymen or Russians, young people who spoke Russian,
and at that time in Ukraine, a Russian was rarely seen as dangerous.
So there was no reason to risk your life and go against a well-armed “militia” with a pitchfork,
even if you didn’t really like the thought that the region’s status would change.
To them it was like, well alright, whatever, it’s not like we’re being occupied by fascists after all.
You can also say that polls showed that the people of Crimea wanted to join Russia.
Well polls be polls, you can always find a poll that you’d like.
There is, for instance, a poll conducted by the International Institute of Sociology in Kiev,
which shows that in the beginning of February of 2014 only 41% of Crimeans supported accession into Russia.
And of course you can find a lot of polls which would show that the majority supported it.
They may not be lying, even though it can’t possibly be 96%, but still there is a big difference between
a poll and an actual decision to leave Ukraine and join Russia.
If the people of Crimea had the opportunity, like the people of Scotland, to openly debate for 547 days
and weigh all the pros and cons, then the following questions would definitely come up during the discussion:
What will be the price of such a sudden secession?
What would happen to our bank deposits and to our property?
What if the international community won’t acknowledge the results and impose sanctions?
What of the electricity and water that are supplied by Ukraine?
What of transportation and freight? The only land road was going through Ukraine back then.
Are the people of Crimea willing to spend the next few years, if not decades, as residents of an occupied territory?
With a real danger of ending up in prison in Ukraine for treason if you work in a state agency.
Or it may just be something like Apple Store not working.
Will they be able to ever enter the Ukrainian territory where many had relatives, acquaintances,
or maybe their work may require them to visit it?
The elites of Crimea would have a lot to think about, too.
If they had enough time, the following question would come up:
Who and by which principles will be governing the peninsula after it enters Russia?
Who do we integrate into the Russian system with all its corruption and the impunity of security forces?
Isn’t it better to just stay where we are?
What happens to our property in Crimea, what if they take it away from us?
If Crimeans had a chance to seriously, carefully and without the presence of foreign troops consider all these questions,
there’s a good possibility that they would demand more autonomy from Ukraine,
the opportunity to speak Russian and to study in Russian and that’s it.
They’d probably decide to not do anything they would later regret, to not endanger their way of life.
It’s easy to speak about how “the price doesn’t matter” on a rally and things like that when you’re in Moscow.
It’s especially easy if you work for VGTRK and have a huge salary.
But people tend to care more about the contents of their own purse than about the values of a state,
and if they could weigh all pros and cons maybe they would choose differently.
Both Russians and Crimeans were fooled.
Because Russians would too react differently if they realized that it was all nothing but a shell game,
and the people of Crimea who are friendly to us are being cheated and dragged into a bad situation.
Everyone had been fooled.
It’s a tough bullet to bite, because back then many were truly proud, and to accept the reality now would
mean to acknowledge that you were a fool.
But objectively there was no Crimean consensus, it was invented by propaganda.
It’s just some people in their high chairs decided that it would be better this way, and then our government
used the military to capture the territory and fooled everyone into thinking that it was the will of the people.
It’s because of these actions people in Donbas later died, and millions of Crimeans faced difficulties that
that they didn’t have to face, and tens of millions of Russians whose opinion was
never even formally asked, became poorer.
There is no simple solution for this problem now, but to crawl out of the pit that we fell into we need
to first acknowledge the truth of how it all happened.
Subscribe to my channel, every day here we discuss something important about our lives.
If we lived in a healthy society we’d see such discussions on federal broadcast,
but it’s now occupied by propaganda, so every day we meet here.
Tomorrow we’ll be discussing the economy, and how can we get out of the current crisis.
If you find my videos to be interesting, check my previous video about the economy,
where I explained what inflation and national debt are.
Or another video about how Hitler came to power in Germany.
See you tomorrow.