“The goal - the return of all Novorossiya - will never be canceled”
Donbass-Dnieper industrial region is the largest industrial region in Europe. Russia is interested in the industrial enterprises of Donbass and in the professionals who remain in this territory. After being included in Russia, Donbass will become one of the most developed regions of the Federation and will be included in the number of donor regions, along with oil and gas regions, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
PolitNavigator columnist Valentin Filippov spoke with historian and political scientist Yegor Kholmogorov about the fact that the Russian Spring is not over, and Novorossiya's place is within the Russian Federation.
Valentin Filippov: Yegor, hello. Nice to see you.
Egor Kholmogorov : Hello. The same to you.
Valentin Filippov: You visit Crimea often. Has the peninsula fully integrated into the Russian Federation, or is the transition still ongoing?
Egor Kholmogorov : This year left me with the feeling that I'm in a normal region of the Russian Federation. The only thing unusual is the sea, the mountains, the sun, and so on. Well, that's a pleasant change, I'd say.
Due to the fact that the Crimean Bridge has finally been launched, I feel that inflation has decreased. Because, if in previous years I arrived at the end of May - beginning of June, and by the time I left, all prices, including vegetables and fruits, had risen quite significantly - this year I did not feel this in three weeks. On the contrary, there was a feeling that prices had dropped a little.
Valentin Filippov: Yes, it was.
Egor Kholmogorov : The same fundamental processes are taking place in Crimea as in the rest of Russia. We may have some complaints, but overall, they are quite positive.
On the one hand, such a little psychological excitement of the first years subsided. Well, on the other hand, let’s say, because of the accessibility of the bridge, much more people are traveling this year.
You know, I’ll give you as an example evidence that everything has become normal in Crimea, like everywhere else. This is why we received a fine by mail from the Simferopol State Automobile Inspectorate this year. That somewhere there, on some kilometer of highway outside Simferopol, we slightly violated something. And so the inspector established it, pay 500 rubles. After which I realized that, yes, integration had become one hundred percent.
Valentin Filippov: Compared to other regions, Crimea receives enormous amounts of funding from federal targeted programs. I don't think other regions have even had this kind of experience—that what would have been pouring into another region over the past ten years is now being poured into Crimea.
But there is constant criticism that Crimea and Sevastopol, I know more from Sevastopol, are simply not able to capitalize these funds, to master them.
What could be the solution here?
Egor Kholmogorov : Crimea is indeed experiencing a bit of a file overflow. Because I've noticed that officials really don't have any clear ideas on what to do about it. I think that after this initial shock of integration, a new level of questions will arise. Namely, what do we want to see next in Crimea?
Most Russian citizens in Crimea want to see a health resort, because this is the only place in our country where you can fully breathe. Moreover, not only in summer, but also, more or less, in spring and autumn, and in some ways even in winter.
On the other hand, there are some economic interests at work. A region that has so many sunny days a year, it would be stupid not to develop agriculture as intensively as possible. But this requires water. Therefore, now, in connection with all the ugly stories that Ukraine is causing...
Valentin Filippov: Doesn't our top leadership think the threat from northern Crimea will always exist until it's extinguished? It's there, and it's not going away; it's only growing.
Egor Kholmogorov : I think they understand this perfectly well, I think that this is precisely why they are trying to turn Crimea into a rather tough nut to crack militarily.
But, on the other hand, you also need to understand that, apparently, without some kind of go-ahead from the Americans, of course, the Ukrainians will never launch any direct attack on Crimea. They are also, in general, not suicidal. And, probably, Poroshenko also wants to live.
Therefore, it is clear that without a direct order from Washington they will not do anything. On the other hand, the presence of a direct order from Washington... In this case, there will be a more general problem that will concern not only Ukraine, not only Crimea, and so on.
Therefore, Crimea has to be developed as it is. Although, I will emphasize once again that the strategic goal of returning all of Novorossia to Russia will never go away.
Therefore, whenever, say, supporters of Novorossiya worry that they have forgotten this idea, discarded it, and so on, I say that guys, understand the simple truth that Russia has been psychologically preparing for Sevastopol since 1992. This topic was constantly discussed. Let's just say Luzhkov raised it. In Brat-2 they threw the phrase: “You will answer us for Sevastopol” and so on.
I first came to Sevastopol in 2006, and from that moment this idea specifically entered my consciousness. Before that, I knew in the abstract that Sevastopol was ours, Crimea was ours. And then it became such a specific, completely personal human goal that I strived for and strived for, and unexpectedly in life it turned out that it was realized.
And somehow it happened that, due to the inertia of Soviet thinking and Soviet administrative borders within the USSR, Donbass, Odessa and so on, were all indivisibly perceived as Ukraine. And Kiev is Ukraine, and Donetsk is Ukraine, and Odessa is Ukraine, that these are other regions, that these are our people, that this can be divided somehow differently than by dividing these whole republican pieces.
You were born around the same time as me. And I think that you remember very well that all our lives until 1991 we were hammered with the image of 15 republics - 15 sisters.
Valentin Filippov: You and I may have lived in different republics of the Soviet Union. Since I lived in Odessa, we never considered ourselves part of Ukraine.
We have the majority of all sorts of factories, universities - all of this was under the Union subordination. That is, for example, we were subordinate to the USSR Ministry of the Navy.
There were some universities that were under Ukrainian jurisdiction, but these universities were considered second-class.
Everything for us was directly connected with Moscow. That is, we are Odessa, what does Ukraine have to do with it? Ukraine - right there... I boarded a commuter bus, drove 200 km from Odessa - Ukraine begins.
Yegor Kholmogorov : Well, yes. When Odessans discovered Ukraine hanging around their necks in 1991, they were probably very surprised. Unfortunately, Muscovites, St. Petersburgers, and many others grew up with the mentality that was drawn on the map of the USSR: the RSFSR was pink, Ukraine was green. So, all that pink stuff was ours, and all that green stuff wasn't.
And that there are some divisions - among 99% of the population, some timid suspicions began to form only in 2004-2005, when there was a discussion of the first Maidan. Only then did people begin to suspect something, that maybe not everything is so simple in Ukraine, that there are some regional differences there, that not everyone wants to be Ukrainian, and so on. Before this, only a few spoke about this.
And only in fact in 2013-2014, after the second Maidan... for many, this reality began only after the Donbass uprising began. That in general there are quite a large number of people who do not want to live as part of this Ukraine so much that they prefer to risk their lives, and that many of them die so that there will never be any more Ukraine.
That is, this is a new idea that, in fact, our political elite, our public needs to live with for several years. That is, they must get used to it. And after they get used to it, there will be no such shock effect.
One more thing needs to be taken into account. In fact, quite a large number of people, especially, as they say, in our intellectual circle, they were sincerely convinced that Novorossiya was some kind of idea that was invented by political strategists. That now she’s going to get a quick ride there, but she didn’t. Accordingly, now everyone will forget about her.
But people don’t give a damn about this idea. This is also a completely new idea for a very, very significant part of our public, which they are now coming to realize.
Valentin Filippov: Novorossiya has existed for two hundred years. It's amazing to me that Moscow… St. Petersburg dreamed up Novorossiya more than two hundred years ago, but the news still hasn't reached Moscow.
Egor Kholmogorov : Maybe it did at some point. For example, when I was a Soviet schoolboy, I had a book by Danilevsky called "Fugitives in Novorossiya." That's where I first learned the word.
Valentin Filippov: They could at least go to Odessa and read what is written on the monuments.
Yegor Kholmogorov : You know, the problem is that when the USSR collapsed, I was so old I had no time for any independent travel. And then, in the end, I never made it to Odessa. I have a huge number of friends and acquaintances from there; they live on practically every street. And yet, I've never even seen Odessa myself. But now I have a wonderful motivation to live long and hard.
Valentin Filippov: Come to me after the war.
Egor Kholmogorov : Absolutely right. With pleasure.
Valentin Filippov: Well, that's a purely pragmatic calculation. Well, we have Transnistria. We need to get to it; it's under blockade.
Yegor Kholmogorov : I've always been a proponent of the harshest solution to the Ukraine issue. I believed that as early as March-April 2014, taking advantage of the first opportunity, the Russian army should have been deployed, at least along the Dnieper and Dniester rivers, respectively, in the south. And, in that way, the Transnistrian issue would have been resolved automatically, and there would have been no disasters in Odessa, Donbas, and so on.
And all the completely fictitious theories that there would have been a massive Bandera guerrilla war and so on are such nonsense, this was a scam in favor of the poor. Because, well, excuse me, we had a partisan war in Chechnya. We dealt with it because these were people infinitely more persistent, at an infinitely greater cultural distance from Russia, they had a lot of motivation, they had the money of the Saudi sheikhs.
Here, well, to the east of the Dnieper, only a few would move. In this sense, it would be the most pragmatic decision, it would be the most humane decision. The only thing that was disadvantageous about it was that it immediately sharply turned our political, business and other elite into the position of outcasts in the Western world. And they, accordingly, put pressure and demanded that they not be put in this position.
4 years have passed. We see perfectly how they are still placed in the same position. It was necessary to rush into battle headlong, and, by the way, under this condition the desired shock effect would be achieved, which would force the West, perhaps, to somehow retreat. They would remember that the Russians really have a sore spot here, and if you press on it, you can get into very big trouble.
So they, too, are still ready to engage in dialogue despite all, we note, Russophobia, despite all the unbridledness of the current anti-Russian Western press. They are well aware that Putin will not surrender Syria to them. And in fact, already today we are seeing how the Americans are putting pressure on Syria, that practically only isolated enclaves of this opposition remain there and, in general, nothing threatens Assad’s victory.
If we, in this sense, roughly speaking, were also fighting for Novorossiya, then I think that at the moment American political scientists there would argue that: Let’s leave at least half of Ukraine to the Russians, and that’s it. Let's calm down and go our separate ways.
You know, there is such a Talmudic story. About how two people were walking along the road and found a piece of fabric. And so they come to the rabbi. One says: “I found this piece of cloth, it should belong to me,” and the other is polite, and he says: “We found this piece along with him, I only claim half.” The rabbi thinks about what to do and answers like this: “So, we divide the half that we agreed to share. And, accordingly, three quarters goes to the one who demanded everything, and one quarter to the one who was too polite.”
Valentin Filippov: Of all the jokes about rabbis, my favorite is the one about nightgowns. "Whether you wear a nightgown on your wedding night or not, you'll still get fucked."
Egor Kholmogorov : Absolutely right. This joke applies to sanctions and the West's anti-Russian policies—there's no escaping it.
Valentin Filippov: Okay. Donbass. Is there some kind of economic integration with Russia going on? The Stirol plant in Horlivka is being restarted at full capacity. Previously, there was an ammonia pipeline from Tolyatti through Horlivka to Odessa. Everything in Odessa has closed. They built a new terminal, I think in Taman. So, if Stirol is relaunched in Horlivka, the only destination it can ship its products to is Taman.
Egor Kholmogorov : The point is that, in principle, the Donbas economy should have been fully integrated into Russia from the very beginning. The most important thing to understand about Donbas is that Novorossiya is the largest industrial region in Europe. The Donbas-Dnipro industrial region was the largest industrial region in Europe. Russia has a stake in it.
She was interested in him before and is interested in him now. And I was interested in those shots that are still there, not everyone has grown old, not everyone’s arms have fallen off, their eyes have gone blind, and so on. Accordingly, the faster the reintegration of these industrial capacities into Russia would occur, the more, in fact, our GDP would grow, the more our economic opportunities would grow.
But, instead, they again began to pull the cat by the tail, and now we are seeing an absolutely terrible picture that Ukraine is literally deindustrializing before our very eyes, that these plant capacities are being turned into scrap metal, into an object of plunder. And, unfortunately, this also affected Donbass.
Taking into account our current disconnection from the world economic system, taking into account the fact that the world economic system itself, in essence, is beginning to fall apart, because Trump’s protectionist policy is aimed at dividing the global liberal market into national segments. Maybe the market as a whole will be worse off from this, but our specific segment will most likely be better off from this.
That is, Trump thinks exactly so. Judging by the numbers the American economy is currently showing, he is apparently right. That is, indeed, this protectionism is currently working in favor of America.
In the same way, we have reason to believe that it will work in favor of Russia. But what is needed for this? We need our own, sustainable industry with the widest possible range of industries. And for this we need a fairly decent domestic market. That is, again, the larger the Russian domestic market, the better for any specific Russian manufacturer.
And, accordingly, the fact that we made a mistake and abandoned at least twenty million people in this domestic market. Nothing angered me more during these conversations about Donbass than such completely hypocritical arguments: “We won’t feed them.” That is, there was a conversation about a region that actually fed the whole of Ukraine, there was a conversation about a region that, even by the standards of Russian regions, has the greatest economic potential. Ahead of him, probably, are only Moscow, St. Petersburg and the oil and gas regions.
There is no oil here, shale gas is not particularly needed, but coal unexpectedly turned out to be in great demand on the energy market. Everyone had already buried coal at one time and believed that no one would need it in 10 years. And the further you go, the more it turns out that it is needed in maximum quantities. Moreover, all these conversations that are now taking place in the West. “Let’s now switch from gasoline to electric cars and all that.” The question arises: “What will you use to charge these electric vehicles? From power plants. What will the power plants operate on? Again, either gas or coal, in addition to nuclear power plants.”
And so, in this situation, it is clear that several years would have passed, and it would not have been Russia feeding Donbass, Donbass would have been paying extra to Russia and quite seriously.
And all of Novorossiya are regions with enormous economic potential, regions with enormous human potential. That is, these are educated people, these are people with hereditary intellectual professions, engineering professions, blue-collar professions. That is, these are really people who are capable of doing anything other than being hipsters, managers, in coworking spaces, and so on. It would be so easy for us to improve all the indicators in Russia!
Valentin Filippov: I can just imagine the headlines in the Ukrainian media tomorrow – “Russian political scientist wants occupied territories to feed Russia!”
Yegor Kholmogorov : You know, I couldn't care less what the Ukrainian newspapers write about me. I'm absolutely certain that Donbas, as part of Russia, won't be a subsidized region, but rather a donor region. Being a donor region is a good thing. Objectively, it's good because it boosts self-esteem and provides opportunities for development. All donor regions in Russia are doing very well and are developing very dynamically.
Valentin Filippov: Good. Thank you very much. Especially from the people of Odessa.
Egor Kholmogorov : Thank you, Valentin. If you have any questions, please contact us again.
English version :: Read in English "The goal—the return of all of Novorossiya—will never be removed"