High in the mountains of the lesser Caucusus, a historical Rubicon has been crossed. Turkey has become the first country to openly intervene in a war in the post-Soviet space that was not formerly part of the Soviet Union. And even more remarkably, Russia remains on the sidelines while Armenia and Azerbaijan renew their stagnant war over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Post-Soviet Space Has Come and Gone

This is a seemingly historic moment, its significance belied only by the simple fact that the year is 2020 and not 2000, and in 2020 the post-Soviet space is little more than a relic of history.

Twenty years prior it may indeed have been unthinkable that a foreign power would intervene militarily in what Russia thought of as its “near abroad.” Russia had by then begun to develop what looked like a new political home for the country and those around it. One where late-Soviet apparatchiks were given a new lease on their careers as leaders of independent states.

In the early 2000s, the distinctly post-Soviet character of most of the USSR’s successor states was unmistakable. A summit of post-Soviet leaders would have included several former Soviet Politburo members, the former Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the former Deputy Premier as well. Post-Soviet then described a living epoch. It was high-Post Sovietism.

The Ouster of Shevardnadze

But by the end of 2003 the first cracks in that system started to show when Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze was toppled by pro-Western protests. The first of many so-called color revolutions which shook the post-Soviet elite to its core. Color revolutions toppled some and terrified the rest, while simultaneously proving the weakness of the post-Soviet space as a political concept.

It was a real political concept though, one that gave added meaning to the word that simply described a state of being formerly part of the USSR. One which manifested itself not just in the many informal ties that aided transnational cooperation between post-Soviet leaders, but also in numerous institutions built to keep post-Soviet states together politically and economically.

Also, one that progressively grew smaller by the year with each deposed post-Soviet autocrat. 

Moscow Shot Itself in the Foot

But the decisive blow did not come from the provinces, but from the center itself. Much like in the USSR’s case, it was the decisions taken in Moscow that proved fatal. With pro-Western forces in Ukraine overthrowing their second Russophile President within a decade in 2014, the Kremlin made a decision that guaranteed any shared post-Soviet space was dead. It annexed Crimea and provoked war in Eastern Ukraine, choosing nationalism over post-Sovietism, and likely condemning Russia and Ukraine to a generation of mutual antagonism.

This conflict also highlighted a paradox in the entire conception of a post-Soviet space to begin with. How could two countries so diametrically opposed be so widely conceived of as belonging to a single political space?

What Does ‘Post-Soviet’ Mean Anymore? Very Little

If Ukraine is post-Soviet and Russia is post-Soviet, Armenia is post-Soviet and Azerbaijan is post-Soviet, then what does post-Soviet even mean? Of course it means these four countries were all once part of the USSR, a country which has not been seen on the map for thirty years. But so too was Croatia part of Austria-Hungary and Serbia part of the Ottoman Empire, and yet we seem to be spared of incessantly hearing about the empires these countries were once part of because it has little to no bearing on contemporary political developments.

In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, there was genuine continuity across the space from Eastern Europe to Central Asia that made a post-Soviet space a real realm of political engagement. Today the phrase “post-Soviet” survives only as a distant and largely irrelevant cultural reference point for a distracted and disinterested western public struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing world.

Meanwhile Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan against Armenia and its proxy Republic of Artsakh is a sign of focus and interest on behalf of Ankara in advancing its political interests. From Libya and Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, it is making full use of its strategically unique geographical position to project power in all directions.

That includes in the direction of the Caucusus. The mountainous region bordering Turkey’s northeast home to countless small nations, only a handful of which have independent states to call their own. One of those lucky few is Armenia, a country of just around 3 million inhabitants now stumbling into an all-out war with a neighbor three times its size supported by a country of over 80 million people in Turkey.

This is today’s reality.

The New Geopolitical Reality

It is hardly just in the Caucusus that this reality is playing out. In Central Asia China has already supplanted Russia as the most important foreign power in the region. In Ukraine and Georgia the temptation of the West has drawn both countries into armed conflict with Russia, while again in 2020 the allure of freedom has brought the people of Belarus into the streets in droves in hopes of toppling their geriatric post-Soviet leader.

New realities –  political, social, cultural, economic, and beyond – have changed every corner of what was once the Soviet Union. Permanently. Just as the Soviet Union is now merely a subject of history, perhaps it is time to accept that the post-Soviet space is as well.

Unlike the young men who perished in the first Nagorno-Karabkh War, the young Azeris and Armenians dying in the mountains of Karabakh have no memory of the Soviet Union. Their birthdays read 2000, 1997, or even 2002. A new millennium in which all things Soviet are a distant memory — and in time all things post-Soviet will be too.

L'articolo The Ephemeral Post-Soviet Space proviene da InsideOver.

On October 31st the NATO-Ukraine Commission reunited in Kyiv to discuss regional security and Ukraine-related issues. The joint conference held in the aftermath of the meeting confirmed that Russia’s most-feared nightmare is expected to come true in the next years: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the country is going through a process of deep comprehensive reform preparatory to join NATO, a process that is widely supported and warmly welcomed by the organization.

In reality, Zelensky’s words are not surprising nor unexpected, as the country’s leadership has been showing increasing interest in joining the military alliance since Euromaidan occurred in 2014, bringing to an end the centuries-long Russian influence over Kyiv and marking the beginning of a new cold war between the West and the Kremlin. Former President Petro Poroshenko declared in 2017 that the country was to implement all the reforms required to officially start the accession path by 2020.

But even before the bloody revolution took place, somewhere in the world, many years ago, a farsighted Polish-born American strategist and geopolitician predicted such traumatic rupture in a book destined to help posterity take advantage of the victory in the cold war. That man was Zbigniew Brzezinski and his book, “The Grand Chessboard“, is proving itself incredibly prophecy-powered year after year.

Brzezinski’s prophecies

Brzezinski passed away two years ago but his ideas keep driving America’s vision and agenda in Eurasia, particularly in the post-Soviet space. As regard to Europe, he highlighted the importance of exploiting the Soviet Union collapse to proceed to the EU and NATO enlargement to the East. Former Communist and Soviet-ruled countries would play a key role in the new century’s containment due to the deep-rooted and historically-motivated Russophobia that would make them one of Nato’s most important bulwarks. Such enlargement occurred and is likely to be extended to Ukraine, North Macedonia, and Georgia.

He also preached the need to focus the efforts on Poland, his native country, to use its historic regional influence exerted over the neighbouring Slavic and non-Slavic world to prevent Russia from re-entering Eastern Europe again. Today, Poland leads the so-called Visegrad Group, the anti-Russian front within the EU and NATO, and is pursuing a region-level hegemonic agenda that may turn the country into a energy and military powerhouse partly self-sufficient by mid-2020s.

After incorporating the Balkans and Eastern Europe to the West, the US should proceed to create a profound fracture within the Russian world’s very heart, namely in Ukraine. According to Brzezinski, such a move would bring to a historic event: the death of Moscow’s European dimension and the consequent birth of a new Russia, no longer Eurasian but merely Asian.

Brzezinski proved right once again. After the loss of Ukraine, Russia quickly re-oriented its foreign agenda to Central, Eastern and Southern Asia, it took advantage of the US-China growing tensions to forge a partnership with Beijing which is increasingly game-changing and world hegemony-seeking, it has been strengthening and enlarging the Eurasian Economic Union, and so on.

But Russia’s turn to the East is going to be limited by another Brzezinski’s prophecy: the fall of North Caucasus and post-Soviet Central Asia into Islamist-driven instability. It is no secret that the above-mentioned regions are among the world-largest recruitment centres for Jihadist organizations and they are likely to be turned against Moscow again after the successful Afghani experience. But this time, Islamist insurgency will pursue a new objective apart from Russia’s weakening: the New Silk Road.

Russia’s mistakes

The US is close to make checkmate not because of Brzezinski’s infallibility but due to the Kremlin’s underestimation of the West’s purposes in the post-Soviet space. It should have been very clear in 1999 and 2004, with the NATO enlargement to Baltic states and Warsaw pact former members, that a new cold war was secretly underway.

More recently Russia has been trying to create a fracture within the NATO by flirting with Turkey. Such a strategy could prove very successful or self-defeating, and some facts seem to indicate that the direction of such a marriage of convenience is likely to be the latter. Erdogan’s Turkey is led by a foreign agenda which is inherently anti-Russian because based on neo-Ottoman and pan-Turkic ambitions over a wide range of Russian-influenced and Russian-ruled lands such as Moldova, Turkestan countries, and Muslim-inhabited regions like Crimea, Tatarstan and other North Caucasus’ republics.

Furthermore, the Trump administration did not retaliate against Erdogan’s decision to buy Russian-made S400 systems and this could be seen as the main self-proving evidence of the fact that Washington is allowing Ankara to temporarily flirt with Russia with the hidden goal to disorient it and weaken further its remaining influence over Eastern Europe and Balkans.

Another severe mistake was to increase the reliance on the West, in particular the EU, from trade and energy exports to tech acquisition. Such dependency proved harmful in the aftermath of the Ukraine-related sanctions regime and has been obliging Russia to elaborate a China-based contingency plan that, again, may prove successful or extremely detrimental. Such situation was forecasted by Brzezinski, who strongly believed that an eventual Moscow-Beijing axis would be Chinese-led and would accelerate Russia’s run to demotion from a world-leading power to an ever-decliningly regional power belonging to China’s sphere of influence.

22 years later the publication of The Grand Chessboard, the Asia’s New Great Game seem headed near to the end and the US who is going to make checkmate.

L'articolo Ukraine and Russia’s Long Road to Annihilation proviene da InsideOver.

November 9 marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the thirtieth anniversary of which falls this year. The fall of the Wall was one of the crucial events of the decisive year of 1989 which marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of which the barrier erected by the socialist authorities of East Germany had become the ultimate symbol.

The fall of the Wall opened the way for the dissolution of the system of power built by Stalin’s Soviet Union in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. It accelerated, without being either the starting point or the conclusion, a process already underway, culminating in 1990 and 1991 in German reunification, the transition of Eastern Europe into a system of pluralist democracies and a market economy (accompanied very often by serious imbalances) and, finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. The end of an ageing system like that of communism under the Soviet Union impacted all of Eastern Europe, triggering a domino effect that swept away political regimes that had had mixed fortunes since the Second World War, melting away like snow in the sun whilst the contradictions that had caused the sclerosis burst out into the open.

Economic stagnation, the persistent influence of debts contracted with western financial institutions, the revival of long-repressed movements with values different from that of communism (Solidarnosc in Poland), the collapse of the security apparatus on which the communist bureaucracies were based (as in Romania) or a convergence of these factors, in the decisive year of 1989, shattered Soviet Europe. It formally ended two years later when the military and strategic alliance of the Warsaw Pact was officially wound up. But it was shaken to its foundations in the year of the fall of the Wall, when Europe saw the removal of its most visible geopolitical fault line and material. And it was the year that, as a result of a historical counter-step, ushered in the process of the marginalisation of Europe – which bipolarism had made into a strategically important appendage after the suicide of the world wars – in the world order of the decades to come.

It all started in Poland

The break-up of Soviet Europe began in Poland. The most important country, together with East Germany, in Moscow’s architecture in Eastern Europe. Struck between 1988 and 1989 by a wave of strikes against the regime headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski who had come to power at the beginning of the decade to prevent a Soviet invasion after the outbreak of the protest of the Catholic trade union Solidarnosc. Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarnosc, bolstered by the support of the first Polish Pope in history John Paul II, the strengthening of the Polish Catholic Church as an influence in society, substantial international loans (including from the Italian Socialist Party of Bettino Craxi) and the working-class base lauded by communist propaganda, gradually managed to undermine the regime.

The wave of strikes led to the calling of the first free elections in post-war Poland in June 1989. Walesa’s strategy succeeded months before the fall of the Berlin Wall was even remotely conceivable: in a system that was still particularly rigid, with a number of seats reserved for the hegemonic communist party, Solidarnosc gained 35%, indicating that the changed wind of history was blowing in the opposite direction to that of the national government. Jaruzelski realistically accepted the result and appointed Solidarnosc to lead a non-communist coalition government led by the trade union activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki. The election of Walesa to the presidency the following year would complete the transition.

Hungary pulls down its wall

The movements that energised Poland had reverberations very soon on neighbouring Hungary in which independence drives had already manifested themselves. The future of Hungary began with the recognition of a past that was seared in the memory of the Magyars: the posthumous pardon granted by the authorities to Imre Nagy and the other heroes of the anti-Soviet revolt of 1956. In June 1989 in Budapest, in the centrally located Heroes’ Square Nagy was solemnly commemorated in an event that led, amongst other things, to fame for a young politician who had just returned to the country after the end of a scholarship funded by George Soros: Viktor Orban.

A short time before, the executive led by Miklos Nemeth had opened the door to a series of important concessions: end of the one-party state, free elections involving democratic parties and, in May, the go-ahead for the removal of the almost 250 km long electrical barrier that marked the border with Austria. After the initial intense phase, the transition that led to the transformation of Hungary into a democratic republic in 1990 and 1991 was gradual and without any particular shocks.

The cork of the GDR pops

The move by the Hungarian government had directly involved East Germany led by the secretary/boss of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker. In the summer of 1989 tens of thousands of East Germans started travelling to Hungary to take advantage of the border crossing points opened to emigration. The mounting tide of demonstrations led the regime to consider as more than plausible the idea of deploying the army to suppress the protests and the demands for greater openness and transparency in the country.

INFOGRAFICA

The rise in internal tensions in the country led the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to hope for the support of the Soviet army stationed in the country in response to the increasingly large scale and aggressive protests. The orders to close the borders, the increasingly hard line of the Politburo of the SED and the threats of a Tienanmen Square style repression were of no use: when in October 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev visited to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, he told East Berlin that Moscow lacked the political strength to support the maintenance of the status quo in its “empire” and openly backed a policy of reform.

The words of Gorbachev were perhaps the most significant event of 1989. In a few days, the General Secretary of the CPSU demolished the political-military architecture that had kept the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the Soviet orbit. Honecker’s political fate was sealed: on 18 October 1989, he was dismissed from the Politburo and replaced by his deputy Egon Krenz, who led the policy of reforms aimed at facilitating the emigration to the west of his fellow citizens. The GDR re-opened its borders and when on November 9 the spokesman of the socialist government gave the green light for direct emigration between East Berlin and West Berlin thousands of citizens of the divided capital crowded together on the Wall built in 1961 and started to physically demolish it to reach the West. The rest is history. A tale that tells of a symbolic rather than a real reunification of Germany where a significant economic and social gap persists between East and West. The wall fell but thirty years later the challenge of integration between the two Germanies is yet to be overcome.

Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, rapid and smooth transitions

Prague and Sofia were greatly influenced by what had happened in East Germany. The irresistible domino effect of the dissolution of the Eastern European communist regimes reached Czechoslovakia in the second half of 1989. The Civic Forum of the writer and dissident Vaclav Havel intensified the pressure for the release of political prisoners, the end of repression and censorship, and on 17 November 1989, a demonstration in the capital for International Student Day spread like wildfire in a full-blown revolt against the regime. A massive, permanent and incredibly disciplined revolt: the mass demonstrations that involved 800,000 people and delegitimised the communist regime were called the “velvet revolution”.

In less than a month, Czechoslovakian communism evaporated, in parallel with what had been done by the SED in the same few days in late November and early December, and the regime gave up the vanguard role of the Party enshrined in the constitution and the transition began instantaneously. Havel became President, the Civic Forum won the popular vote in 1990 and, in 1993, the republic split, giving rise to the current Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Czechoslovakia was an industrial and productive centre of great importance. Bulgaria was the steering column of the Warsaw Pact, perhaps the only true puppet state bereft of real sovereignty in the Soviet block. Its continued existence was linked to bipolarism and the Cold War and when the most symbolically significant event, the fall of the Wall, took place, the importance of the neutralist proclamation of the Soviets was made plain to Sofia and the veteran Stalinist vassal Todor Zhivkov was dismissed in less than 24 hours. The speed with which the Bulgarian Communist Party acted allowed it to survive until the end of the Cold War. Once it had changed its skin and rejected Marxism-Leninism, the party assumed the name Bulgarian Socialist Party and called the 1990 election and won it.

INFOGRAFICA

The Christmas of Romanian Blood

The case of the Romanian transition was an anomaly in 1989. The country most independent from Moscow, ruled by Nicolae Ceaucescu, had paid for its diplomatic and geopolitical adventurism and excessively imprudent rapprochement with the West with the debt trap. Ceaucescu’s Romania had to resort to tough austerity measures to repay debts contracted with international institutions. Austerity and the rationing of food, gas and other necessities were, according to many analysts, instrumental from 1981 onwards in containing the spread of dissent apart from several industrial and mining strikes.

Ceaucescu’s Romania was a police state closely guarded by the notorious Securitate that was so diligent in doing its repressive work of preventing the emergence of any possible form of dissent. While Ceaucescu’s Romania became the poorest country in the Soviet block and its infant mortality rates reached Third World levels, the dictator and his wife Elena caused a sensation due to their luxurious lifestyle and their progressive estrangement from the rest of the country. The most emblematic example of Ceaucescu’s paranoid desire for self-celebration is the gigantic, cold and grey Palace of Parliament of Bucharest, a white elephant in a Romania devastated by poverty.

Ceaucescu did not understand the need for compromises or changes of direction. When street protests began to multiply in Romania, the dictatorship reacted brutally. The deaths of hundreds stifled the protests that had spread from Transylvania to the capital Bucharest starting on December 17th. This was too much for many of the soldiers and officers of the armed forces who soon began to mutiny and joined the ranks of the regime that wanted to turn away from a confrontation that threatened to cause a devastating civil war. Given the structure of Romanian power, the only realistically possible alternative to Ceaucescu was a conspiracy within the regime. An internal showdown. So it was. On December 21st Ceaucescu incited a crowd of 100,000 people in Bucharest; a few hours later, Defence Minister Vasile Minea was found dead in suspicious circumstances. He had taken his own life after being dismissed for mutiny, the regime claimed. He had been killed for disobeying orders, claimed the newly formed National Salvation Front (NSF) founded by several second-tier members of the apparatus led by Ion Iliescu.

The outcome of the revolt was determined by the deputy Victor Stanculescu. Terrified by the idea of ​​having to choose between two firing squads (that of the rioters or that of the regime), Stanculescu led the revolt of the armed forces. Taking advantage of the situation of chaos to use them against the dictator, who was besieged on 22 and 23 December by protesters crowded around the government buildings of Bucharest. Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu’s attempt to escape by helicopter failed: on 24 and 25 December 1989 the FSN held a summary trial of the dictator and his wife which ended in their death by firing squad. The Christmas of Romanian blood ended a terrible ten days for the country in which between 600 and 1,000 people lost their lives. The internal coup within the Romanian power apparatus ended in the most atypical manner of the year of the fall of the Wall. The decisive year of 1989: a year at the end of which Europe found itself less divided but at the same time, less central in the world. Once bipolarism had come to an end, the old faults inside the continent would continue to manifest themselves. Far from ending European history, the fall of the Wall put it back on track.

Translation by Dale Owens

L'articolo Europe’s Longest Year proviene da InsideOver.

The Berlin Wall was opened on the evening of November 9, 1989. It paved the way, for the collapse of the SED dictatorship as well as the dissolution of the GDR, while at the same time allowing Germany’s reunification. A revisionist theory has manufactured a consensus that credits Gorbachev and civil unrest within the GDR as being the deciding factors. The truth is that the fall of the Berlin Wall would likely never had occurred if it was not for President Ronald Reagan and the foundations he laid out during his quest for peace with the Soviet Union. 

The Hawk

While his domestic objectives were primarily based on ‘Reaganomics’, smaller government and deregulations, in line with a fiscally conservative mindset, his foreign policy demarches, particularly during his first term, were based on military strength, which included increasing the military budget by 40 per cent and the subsequent paradigm shift from détente to roll back.

With the communist threat continuously spreading and the constant pursuit of extending territory and ideology, Reagan realised the significance of conducting a different kind of policy than his predecessors. Moreover, the omnipresent scenario of mutual assured destruction (‘MAD’) between the two superpowers had been one of the main reasons Reagan was extremely eager to find a way to win the Cold War.

This alternative solution came in an unlikely form and remained one of Reagan’s most significant achievements in shaping the outcome of the Cold War. It was the introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (‘SDI’) in 1983, a futuristic defence program that would alter the American position significantly. The idea was to make nuclear war impossible. ‘SDI’, a missile defence system, some ground-based, some stationed in space, offered a chance not only to prevent attacks conducted by the Soviet empire but furthermore to put enormous pressure on the Soviet Union. Not without reason did Henry Kissinger once state that the US’ commitment to ‘SDI’ was one of the main reasons for the end of the Cold War.

The impact of the Strategic Defense Initiative did leave the Soviet Union with two rather atrocious alternatives: It would either lead to a US breakthrough and the implementation of ‘SDI’ or consume all Soviet resources during the process of countering the United States’ plans.

Reagan’s ‘SDI’ was a game-changer. For decades, the Soviet Union had gone all-in to maintain its status as a global superpower, which had mainly been based on its nuclear arsenal. ‘SDI’ now threatened to make the weaponry impotent and obsolete with one single scientific invention. A fiasco for the Soviet Union, not only in terms of its ambitions as a superpower but also economically. Suddenly, the Soviets found themselves in a peculiar position and needed to resume arms control talks.

Another crucial element that forced the Soviets to collapse and allowed East Germany to be liberated was the idea that the United States would be able to passively engage against this spread of communism under Soviet influence by supporting anti-communist movements in several parts of the world. Born was the Reagan Doctrine.

It was the antidote for the Brezhnev Doctrine that had worked by the rule of whatever the Soviets got (i.e. territory), they would keep. The Reagan Doctrine aimed to negate this process and simply said: no, you will not.

The modus operandi here was to fund resistance fighters as mentioned above with financial capabilities and political influence with the ultimate aim of forcing the Soviets into an overspending and subsequent collapse of its system. While the United States spent less than one billion a year, the Soviet Union spent about eight billion per anum to overcome the impact the Reagan Doctrine had on communist expansion plans.

The Negotiator

Negotiations with the Soviets had been puzzling over the decades, with Brezhnev, Andropov and Chermenko having one trait in common: an ideology that went back to the second World War and culminated in the distrust against the West. This parochial attitude changed, however, and an opportunity arose when Gorbachev became Reagan’s new interlocutor.

Not only was Gorbachev the product of a different generation, but was more modern, moderate and most importantly, educated. In his approach to persuade the new Soviet leader, Reagan conducted four summits between 1985 and 1989, Reagan’s last year in office. Reagan’s hopes regarding Gorbachev were warranted, and the two leaders concurred on the idea to cut nuclear weapons in half during the Geneva summit of 1985.

However, one needs to take into account the fact that Reagan’s military expenditure – as well as Saudi Arabia, conveniently an ally of the United States, increasing its oil production to the Soviet’s detriment – had undoubtedly had a severe impact on the Soviet Union at this point already with its economy struggling to keep up with the US’.

It would, therefore, be rather ambitious to argue Gorbachev had been open to negotiations out of the goodness of his heart. More had it been out of necessity in order to stop an inevitable downfall based on overextension and the financial pressure Washington had put on Moscow via the arms race and economic embargos.

In October 1986, Gorbachev told party associates: ‘We will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities. If the new round [of an arms race] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable’. Only days after his statement, Gorbachev’s proposed – inter alia- a 50% reduction of the nuclear arsenal Reykjavik summit.

His statement, as well as the following actions, reiterate the argument that it had been Reagan and his policies that made the Soviets change their course. Admittedly, it still takes a reasonable person as opposed to a hardliner on the other side of the table. However, Reagan had undoubtedly delivered the incentives.

During their summit in Reykjavik however, Reagan’s counter-proposal was as ambitious as ever. In his determination to end the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, he not only proposed to abolish all nuclear weapons but was also willing to share his ‘SDI’ plans with the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev, however, did not believe the willingness of Washington to share ‘Star Wars’. He instead made it clear that the Soviet Union was willing to accept Reagan’s idea of abolishing all nuclear weapons but made Washington’s abolishment of ‘SDI’ his sine qua non.

One can see how close the two superpowers came in an attempt to jointly abolish their nuclear arsenal, guarantee peace and also the impact Reagan had had at this point in history already. Two sides that, only twenty-four years ago had come dramatically close to a nuclear war, were all of a sudden negotiating about abolishing all nuclear weapons and sharing technologies.

Nonetheless, Gorbachev had to convince many people within the Politburo, who did not want to rule out a play by Reagan and a potential first strike from the Atlantic coast. Gorbachev succeeded. Moreover, his policies of Perestroika and Glasnost arguably set the stage for a dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On December 8, 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, arguably the last piece of the puzzle – the progress that had started with Reagan’s presidency in 1981- and the initiation of the end of the Cold War as the world had known it.

After Reagan had left office, the Berlin Wall opened ten months later and the Cold War – though unofficially – was declared history on December 3, 1989. The Soviet Union ultimately dissolved in 1991, with Germany being able to reunify its country. While Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize in the early nineties for his contribution during the Cold War, he once said about Reagan, and this is perhaps worth more than any external evaluation: ‘He has already entered history as a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War’.

As such, he remains the man, who laid the foundation for Germany’s reunification and ought to be commended for it by all Germans.

L'articolo Mr Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall: Reagan’s Influence on the Soviets proviene da InsideOver.

Russia’s domestic and foreign policy is not fully understood without taking into account the centuries-long powerful influence it has exerted on pop culture, politics and clergy, by the idea of the “Third Rome”. Such a concept was developed in the aftermath of the Byzantine empire’s fall and, shortly, states that Russia is the spiritual heiress of Rome and Constantinople and, accordingly, the true defender of Christendom.

Although Russia indeed recognizes and promotes its cultural and religious pluralism since the tsarist times, it is equally undeniable the importance played by the Orthodox faith throughout the centuries in the creation and definition of the Russian identity and the shaping of the foreign policy, as shown by the “Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationality” 19th century doctrine or by the will to defend pilgrims and Christian worshippers living in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land.

After a 80-year oblivion caused by the atheistic goals of the Soviet Union, the Third Rome has been brought to new life during the Putin era and is helping the country gain increasing credibility and support worldwide, from the Middle East’s persecuted Christians to the Vatican, from European far-right populists to American Christian fundamentalists.

The Vatican-Moscow axis

As part of its pro-Christian global agenda, in recent years, Russia has been showing a growing interest in the improvement of bilateral ties with the Vatican. The approachment started just before the death of John Paul II and recorded an impressive intensification during the Pope Francis era, whose Third World-focused and China-friendly agenda fits perfectly with Russia’s long-term ambition to accelerate the transition to multipolarism.

The most important event was the 2016 joint declaration signed in L’Avana by Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill. The 30-point document was intended to be the first step towards the reconciliation and identified common culture wars to fight together, such as the culture of death, the defence of natural family, and the capitalism-driven de-humanization of people, and common goals in the international arena, such as the protection of persecuted Christians.

In the aftermath of the L’Avana declaration, Vatican – and Moscow Patriarchate – backed organizations raised a degree of cooperation on humanitarian assistance in war-torn Syria and Iraq to unprecedented levels and extended the range action to the rebuilding of damaged churches and historic landmarks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis seem tied by a very good relationship as they met three times since 2013 and share publicly a common position on the world-most important issues, from Ukraine to Venezuela and Syria. Last July, Putin’s trip to Italy was the occasion to pay a visit to the Vatican, where he signed a memorandum of understanding on health cooperation and re-confirmed Russia’s front-line engagement in the protection of persecuted Christians and defense of “traditional values“.

But the Middle Eastern and North African region is not the only front in which Russia and the Vatican are working together. Pope Francis made clear that his goal is to de-westernize the Catholic church and give voice to the outskirts of the world. Accordingly, the pontiff strengthened the ties with Russian-friendly rising powers currently involved in open confrontations against the West, namely Iran and China.

In the first case, he lobbied at international level for the nuclear deal, while in the second case he is trying to normalize the status of the Chinese Catholic Church, to take advantage of the ongoing Christian-oriented demographic revolution and lobbied the Italian government to join the New Silk Road.

Moscow in the Middle East

From the very beginning of the Syrian civil war and the expansion of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), the Kremlin was helped in gathering information by the Patriarchate of Antioch, whose local prelates acted as informants for the Patriarchate of Moscow following the rising terrorist threats and writing their reports. The latter worked jointly with the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society to help the Christians face food scarcity and basic needs and in the year 2013 alone, they sent 70 tons of aid and $1.3 million.

When in 2015 the ally Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of overthrow due to the rising pressure coming from Al Qaeda-linked opposition rebels and the IS, Russia opted for a military intervention to restore order and peace in the unrest-plagued country and to prevent terrorists from extending further.

The protection of a long-tormented Christian community from an extinction scenario played an important role in convincing Moscow to intervene, according to Putin itself, and was warmly welcomed by Catholics, American Protestants and Orthodox Arabs, contributing to significantly improve the image of Russia among them and, in particular, in the Middle East.

Hungary joins the holy axis

From now on, Russia is going to be supported in the protection of Arab Christians by a former great power which was historically engaged in the defense of Christianity: Hungary. On 30 October, Putin landed Budapest for an official meeting with the Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Many topics were matter of talks, from economy to energy, but a reserved place was given to the plight of Christians in the Muslim world.

According to Hungary’s state secretary for the aid of persecuted Christians, Tristan Azbej, the two leaders discussed the foundation of an international alliance between nations interested in fighting Christianophobia and ending the worldwide persecution, which is about to reach “genocide levels” in several parts of the planet and makes Christianity the world-most persecuted religion.

The Hungarian government presented the proposal to Putin, who showed much interest in it, and is set to unveil it on the world stage very soon. Eventually, the leaders agreed on the need to extend the bilateral cooperation to the help of Christians in North Africa and the Middle East with the double-aimed goal of protecting them and avoiding their mass exodus to Europe.

L'articolo Russia’s Return As Defender of Christianity proviene da InsideOver.

The road leading to Akarmara is a long dirt track that seems to never end. The ride tosses and bumps you over numerous holes, lunar craters in an idyllic landscape of mountains, deep gorges and woods. And then there are the many ruins, scattered among the greenery and building skeletons, forgotten memories of a dazzling past.

Akarmara is located in the Republic of Abkhazia and today is primarily known as a ghost town. But it has not always been that way, and, even today, a few tenacious inhabitants don’t want to abandon the place that has always been their home. Abkhazia is a 200-kilometer long, 100-kilometer wide strip of land along the Black Sea. During the Soviet period, the coastline was beloved by the communist elite for holiday. The subtropical paradise was developed for tourism and had high-level accommodations. Here, politicians and important USSR figures, such as Stalin, Beria and Khrushchev came to stay, and Brezhnev even had a dacha, or country home, here.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia proclaimed itself independent of Russia, and, in turn, Abkhazia proclaimed independence from Georgia. The latter did not accept Abkhazia’s independence and so it invaded the region, triggering a civil war that lasted a year, devastating the country, and leaving 30,000 dead and displacing tens of thousands.

Today Abkhazia is a non-place, not even mentioned on official maps: a ghost state. It is an area of disputed status with de facto independence and without any recognition from the United Nations or the European Union. The Abkhaz Republic is in fact recognized only by seven UN member states (including Russia) and two states that are also are not recognized internationally. Georgia lays claim to the entire territory, declaring it a “territory occupied by Russia.”

Although more than 25 years have passed since the end of the war, several cities are still largely abandoned. Half of the Abkhaz population, especially in the east, was of Georgian nationality and fled during the war, depopulating the region.

The international embargo and the unrecognition of independence by most of the world prevented the development of the economy and foreign investments in Akarmara.

The veterans of Akarmara

Along the dirt road to Akarmara, a railway bridge suddenly appears. It was used to carry coal extracted in Akarmara to the nearby city of Tkvarcheli and from there to rest of the Soviet Union.

The name of Akarmara refers to an area consisting of three towns: Dzhantukha, Polyana and Akarmara itself, which fall under the jurisdiction of Tkvarcheli, which received city status in 1942 after having become a very important mining center. It prospered quickly, and its inhabitants, including those of the Akarmara area, did very well. As was normal in all Soviet mining towns, a miner earned five times the average salary. At the time it was not easy to find a free apartment, and many dreamed of moving to what was essentially a place for a privileged few. “It was better in the times of the Soviet Union,” says Vlad, one of the few inhabitants we meet in Dzhantukha. “Back then there was food and wealth for all, whereas now there are only ruins and poverty.”

Vlad invites us to his home in what remains of a beautiful building in neo-classical Stalinist style.

Across five floors, the only apartment still occupied is Vlad’s. The rest of the structure is literally collapsing. We climb the stairs passing through doors that lead to nothing, gutted apartments, unsafe walls and fallen ceilings. As we enter Vlad’s house, which has a simple but welcoming interior with Soviet-style furniture, he begins to tell us his story. “I was born in Dzhantukha, and my father was a miner. He came from Tamysh, in Russia, whereas my mother, a cable car worker, she came from Labinsk. People moved to this city to work in the mine, and everyone met each other here, like my parents, who then decided to start a family. During the Soviet period the quality of life was excellent. A miner had a good salary, and in the city, you could find particular goods that you couldn’t in other places. Everything was well-organized, with shops, restaurants, the Alashara cinema, schools, and a hospital of the highest quality.”

While Vlad speaks, the wind beats the shutters, and every so often we can hear a dull thud. It is not the famous “ghosts of Akarmara,” only parts of the surrounding buildings that occasionally fall off under the weight of time.

After offering us a glass of vodka, Vlad continues to remember, “The problems here started with the 1992 war. The area of Tkvarcheli was sieged by Georgian troops, and we were all blockaded for the duration of the conflict. It was a very difficult period because supplies and provisions wouldn’t arrive. There was no heating or electricity. To survive we could only attempt to pass by the blockades to reach neighboring villages and exchange our goods for food. We risked a lot because we had to go through territories occupied by the Georgian army, but we had no other choice. War was a huge tragedy for everyone. We were just waiting for it to end to go back to living in peace. Here in Akarmara there were different nationalities, and we lived peacefully respecting each other. Even during the war, when we were blockaded, we continued to help each other.”

Vlad continues: “Once the conflict ended, we had to restore everything – heating, electricity – and international red cross volunteers brought food and basic necessities. It was a huge help for all of us. But the mines were now closed, and there were no possibilities for economic recovery. So these towns began to depopulate. In 2000 a Turkish company settled nearby to produce cement and gave jobs to 300 people. But five years ago the company closed. Currently, around 30 people live in Dzhantukha. Fifteen each in Polyana and Akarmara, but I decided to stay because this is where I was born and raised. It’s my home. Also, after the war, my parents were old and could not move elsewhere. It was my duty to stay with them. In 2001 my mother passed away and in 2011 my father. Fortunately, today I work as a guard for what remains of the Turkish company. Economically I can live, but I could not afford to buy a house somewhere else. The prices are too high. And anyway, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. I love this place. I love this house.”

While Vlad’s words crumble before us like the ruins of this city, Nana, his daughter, prepares lunch. She doesn’t live here but often comes to visit her father. Nana had to leave Dzhantukha and move to Tkvarcheli to look for better job opportunities. After turning off the stove we sit in the living room and she says, “I had a beautiful childhood here, so beautiful and carefree, one I would wish for any child. People were hospitable and welcoming, the atmosphere warm and nature lush. We felt free. We played all day. But we also felt sadness for what was around us, the abandoned buildings and houses, because we knew, from the stories of our parents, what the city was like before the war and how well people lived. We knew who had lived in those buildings and was no longer there. But for us this city was magical, and I would come back to live here immediately if there was at least a shop where you could buy food. I strongly believe in a future for this place. Obviously we cannot restore all the buildings, but perhaps with tourism will come new life.”

As we head to the car, Nana looks out of the window, one of the few still intact (and who knows for how much longer) to say goodbye.

The next day, we return to the area in search of Polyana, the other city that has no trace. Not even our guide, Miron, who knows the area like the back of his hand, knows
exactly where it is, and the maps give no hint. In fact, this is the most remote fraction of the Akarmara area.

We try a few roads, risking getting stuck, but, after an hour of failed attempts, at the top of a rough uphill drive that seems to lead to nowhere, Polyana appears. Unlike Akarmara and Dzhantukha, architecturally characterized by Stalinist neoclassicism, Polyana is a classic Soviet town with gigantic rectangular apartment buildings.

On its empty streets we meet Ravaz, a man marked by time who, intrigued by our presence, offers to accompany us and tell us about his home. He speaks only Abkhaz and not a word of Russian, so much so that even our guide struggles to understand him. The history of this third town is almost the same as the other two with which it shares the same sad fate of decay.

Along the abandoned streets, Ravaz gives us a list of everything that used to exist there: the shops, schools, kindergartens and apartments all full of life. While we imagine what life was like here, Ravaz tells us what it’s like today, “Most of the very few inhabitants remaining in these districts live only thanks to nature, cultivating the land, raising cows and pigs or producing honey. Some of them work in the city of Tkvarcheli. The elderly have a small pension and some of us live by collecting bricks from abandoned buildings and then selling them. It’s a very hard life. We survive with what we can, but nobody wants to leave their homes.”

Ravaz stops in front of a ruined building, looks up and shouts, “Ghennady!” He is a close friend of his who lives on the third floor. The other two have practically collapsed.

Ghennady does not respond. Today he probably went to Tkvarcheli to sell some bricks. This is confirmed by Sveta, an elderly lady we meet later as she is getting water from the well. Ravaz’s few other friends are also not there. Today they went to the city to visit relatives. But they will come back because the bond with their land, with these splendid towns immersed in nature, the memory of a lost paradise, is so strong.

L'articolo The country swallowed by war proviene da InsideOver.