Žygimantas Pavilionis: Big or small Russia?

“Big Russia is a big threat , small Russia is a small threat,” the Circassians and representatives of various other peoples enslaved by Russia – Tatars, Chechens, Ukrainians who have been fighting for more than a decade, and re-enslaved Georgians – who gathered in the Seimas for their first international congress in Vilnius, repeated to us last week. It is wonderful that despite internal tensions and the threat to our own freedom, we were able to welcome them to the Seimas.

 

I will never forget the moment when, tired from a sleepless night of filibustering, the Seimas members in the plenary hall – both left and right – stood up and applauded those who had come to thank Lithuania for its long-standing support for their freedom. I think that at that moment (perhaps unconsciously) most Seimas members felt that the internal tensions imposed by the suicidal “Nemunas Dawn” and similar radicals were diverting all of our attention from the most important geopolitical challenges, preventing us from concentrating on Lithuania’s strategic tasks – the victory of Ukraine, the fight for your and our freedom, for Lithuania’s leadership and future.

 

All day long, listening to inspiring speeches by representatives of enslaved peoples, I wondered how much we really know these peoples? Once upon a time, during the occupation, it was very painful for us when we were called Russians or Soviets - but after all, we often do not distinguish any colors in Russia today, as if by order of Moscow we call them all Russians, although they are not. It took a very long time before, together with our own struggling emigration, other enslaved peoples in New York and other free cities and countries, we managed to draw attention to ourselves and force Westerners to see the religious and national differences in the Soviet empire, but do we ourselves see them in Putin's current empire?

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During the years of occupation, after decades of joint struggle with Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, we were able to find leaders across the seas, such as President Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, St. John Paul II, who focused on the agenda of the enslaved peoples and managed to defeat the Soviet Empire. So why today, together with Ukrainians, Poles and other freedom-loving countries, cannot we take such leadership towards the enslaved peoples in Russia (and beyond)?

 

The collapse of the Soviet Empire did not save all the enslaved nations – as after the First World War, only the Central European and Baltic countries managed to escape the clutches of the Russian Empire. Unfortunately, the “democratic Russia” was left with its entire “near neighborhood” – from Central Asia, the Caucasus to Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, not to mention the peoples imprisoned within Russia, with whom the “democrat” Boris Yeltsin continued to “deal” as in Chechnya. George Bush Sr.’s “Chicken Kiev” speech in 1991 is a symbol of this Western appeasement of imperial Russian policy, which in various forms – with new faces – has essentially continued to this day in Western capitals.

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski has also noted that if the US and all other leaders of the free West had fought for the freedom and independence of Ukraine since 1991, the way they fought for the freedom of Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary (and a little later began to fight for the freedom of the Baltic states), Russia's own "transformation" could have ended quite differently. If we had created opportunities for Ukraine to join us in the European Union (EU) and NATO at that time, Russia would not have decided to invade a weak Ukraine, destroyed by internal corruption and oligarchs, a good decade later. The same applies to Moldova or Georgia, which were occupied due to insufficient Western support for its transatlantic aspirations. Until Lithuania's accession to the EU, no one in the West responded in principle to the long-suffering freedom in Belarus.

 

So, it is not the expansion of the EU or NATO that causes Russian aggression (as Moscow is trying to convince us, and which is unfortunately echoed today by Donald Trump and a number of other Western leaders who have historically blocked the expansion of the EU and NATO to the East), but rather our indecision, weakness, our own fear and condescension to autocratic regimes that encourage even more aggressive Russian behavior. The Maskoli have not changed for at least the last five hundred years - as long as their empire does not collapse, they will continue to invade wherever we, the free West, allow them, show our weakness, and indulge them.

 

By the way, quite often such current "Chicken Kiev" policy is called realpolitik by some more clever politicians or foreign ministers today , or pragmatic policy, the essence of which is reconciliation or adaptation to the policies of autocratic empires, satisfaction with the current status quo or simply "making" money, profiting from the killing, destruction, and violence of other nations. The most important thing is sacrificing one's own humanity or the principles of a rules-based world, which very quickly turns against the states ruled by such "pragmatists", because they themselves allow Russia to question their own borders or sovereignty. Usually, such a policy is proclaimed in our time by extreme left and right forces, which essentially play the role of Trojan horses of dominant imperial regimes inside free countries. It is sad, but at least three such political forces currently belong to the ruling majority in Lithuania. I still hope that at least some social democrats understand this.

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But the same is true of the rest of the Russian Empire, which remained the only one in Europe – all other European empires successfully transformed into a civilized European coexistence, created a huge transatlantic space that protects freedom, which in terms of quality of life and security within it cannot be equaled by anyone on the entire planet. Although the Russian Empire constantly threatens – in a harsh manner – not to defend any national or religious minorities on its own territory, not to “divide Russia”, not to “interfere” in the affairs of de facto occupied Belarus or all its other neighbors, it is obvious that it is the Russian Empire that has been the essential source of continuous terror – both internal and external – for a good five centuries in a row. The very presence of the Russian Empire, its existence, creates constant terror, which today reaches all continents of the world. All the nations neighboring Russia today are united by tragic dates that were created by the same Russian Empire.

 

However, this is only a very small part of the tragedies and terror that we ourselves know about. What is happening inside Russia itself – we really know very little, because Russia is very consistently erasing all its crimes from the world’s historical memory. We must learn to distinguish colors in Russia itself, if we want them to be defended in its neighborhood and everywhere else in multi-colored Europe, where we have already learned to distinguish colors and respect each other’s freedom and identity. The only goal of the Circassians gathered in the Lithuanian Seimas was this: to help Lithuanians distinguish colors in Russia itself, despite Russia’s continued efforts to increasingly destroy these colors – both inside and outside the country. The Circassians wanted to inform the Lithuanians about their fate, in whom they – like many other enslaved peoples – sincerely believe, because we are an example of the same millennia-old, formerly enslaved people, which – like the Jews – despite all persecutions, managed to defend its freedom, consolidate it in the EU and NATO, and continue to strengthen it in every way.

 

We Lithuanians know a lot about the Chechens, whose statehood was destroyed at the dawn of our own independence (unfortunately, then we did not have enough courage and strength to recognize their statehood even on paper, as the Ukrainians had already done). But how much do we know about the fate of other enslaved peoples in Russia? Tatars, Circassians, Chuvash, Bashkirs, Kalmyks and others?

 

What is so special about the genocide of the Circassian people? After all, throughout its history, Russia has similarly slaughtered, killed, and destroyed all peoples and has not finished this diabolical occupation for a single day! It is distinguished by the fact that it is the oldest known and best documented (in the United Kingdom, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia itself) genocide of an enslaved people, which we must not only learn about, but also evaluate, because otherwise we knowingly tolerate the genocide not only of the Circassians, but also of all other peoples, which the Russians carry out every day, to this day.

 

The genocide of the Circassians, who had lived for centuries on the northern shores of the Black Sea (their largest city is Sochi), continued for a whole century. The invasion of the Muscovites into the entire North Caucasus (and Circassia) began in 1763 and was finally completed in 1864, during this genocide more than 90 percent of the Circassians were killed, about 6,000 Circassian cities, settlements, and cultural centers were [destroyed]. The remnants of the Circassian people fled mainly to the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, some remained in the occupied territories (currently a million Circassians live in Russia, several million in other countries, powerful Circassian associations currently operate in Turkey, Jordan, and Syria).

 

In 1834, during the fighting, the Circassians once again declared their independence, in 1841 they liberated the entire Black Sea coast from the Maskoli, but in 1861 (at the same time that we, along with our Polish and Belarusian brothers, rose up in our last joint uprising), the Maskoli began their final invasion and destroyed most of the Circassians, deported the rest to Turkey and scattered them all over the world. The Maskoli massacred about 1.5 million Circassians. After the Bolshevik terror, Joseph Stalin continued to exterminate them through starvation, deportations and murders (in 1937, all books and documents were burned, and the entire intelligentsia was massacred). Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet “leaders” continued to Russify them en masse during the Soviet era. After the collapse of the Soviet empire, the autonomous regions of Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria were established, dividing the Circassian territory into areas controlled separately by the occupiers.

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