"KHAN ABULKHAIR, SULTAN BARAK AND THE ORENBURG ADMINISTRATION IN THE 40-50S OF THE XVIII CENTURY"
BYKOV ANDREY YURIEVICH
Doctor of Historical Sciences, PhD / Doctor of Philosophy
Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences
Starting to analyze this problem, it should be clarified that we are trying to find out the evolution of approaches (concepts) in domestic social science in relation to such issues as the principles for determining and changing the state and administrative (external and internal) borders. As part of this, discussions that unfolded in certain periods of the 20th century, as well as their connection with the evolution of the legal framework, will be touched upon. At the same time, it is impossible to do without a brief historical digression.
The process of folding a single space, which became the territorial basis for the later delimitation and the formation of "new borders", has a long history. Here are just some of the strokes of the process of formation of this space. Since 1654, when the Pereyaslav Rada approved an agreement on the transfer of the Poltava, Kiev, Chernihiv, Podolia and Volyn regions, the reunification of Ukraine with Russia began. After the conclusion of the Nystadt peace with Sweden, Russia annexed Ingermanland, Livonia, Estonia and part of Karelia. In the 1720s after the conclusion of the Petersburg Treaty, Russia annexes Derbent (it will enter and leave its composition several more times) and the western coast of the Caspian Sea. Between 1731 and 1860. there was a gradual accession to Russia of the Kazakh zhuzes. In the 1770s Crimea and parts of the North Caucasus were annexed to Russia. In 1783, the Treaty of Georgievsky was signed with the kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, which began the entry of Georgia into the Russian Empire. As a result of the second and third St. Petersburg conventions on the partition of Poland, Belarus, part of Ukraine, Lithuania, Courland went to Russia. From the end of the XVIII century. the annexation of the territory inhabited by Azerbaijanis began. Since 1791, the annexation of Bessarabia began. According to the Adrianople peace with Turkey, the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus went to Russia. In the second half of the XIX century. parts of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva were annexed to Russia. The administrative boundaries of these territories changed depending on the change in the external borders, but even more so on the internal administrative-territorial transformations. So, the Kazakhs of the Younger and Middle zhuzes were part of the Orenburg and West Siberian governor-generals, then they were reassigned to the Steppe governor-general. The Kazakhs of the Senior Zhuz were part of both the Steppe and Turkestan governorates. At the same time, the Mangyshlak Kazakhs were subordinate to the Caucasian chiefs, and the Kazakhs of the Bukeev Horde were subordinate to the Astrakhan governor. At the same time, in relation to the Kazakhs, Russia performed a consolidating function, uniting them as part of one state. In relation to other ethnic groups, it could play the exact opposite role. As a result of Russia's wars with Iran and Turkey, Azerbaijanis and Armenians were divided[1]. The history of the formation of the borders of the Russian Empire is of fundamental importance also because in many ways already before the 20th century. the contours of those new borders that took shape as state borders in the post-Soviet space at the end of the 20th century were laid.
The phenomenon of new borders, or otherwise - the borders between fifteen internationally recognized independent states newly formed as a result of the collapse of the USSR and a number of entities claiming international recognition, has a number of aspects: character, formation, legitimacy, and others. To a large extent, the boundaries of the spaces of these states are determined by administrative boundaries within the framework of being part of the Russian state, the Russian Empire and the USSR, i.e. The “post-Soviet space” is defined by the “Soviet space”, and to a large extent it is defined by the “imperial space”[2]. The formation of this space was determined by the annexation (voluntary entry, conquest, etc.) of neighboring territories and peoples into Russia, and then the USSR. Note that the annexation of peoples to Russia was not always accompanied by the legal inclusion of the territories inhabited by them, and vice versa, the annexation of a territory did not always mean the annexation of peoples. And as an extreme case, the loss of territory could mean the annexation of the population[3].
It should be borne in mind that international legal norms, and, consequently, the principles of demarcation [4], were subject to changes over time. Thus, under the conditions of the feudal social structure, ideas dominated, according to which the territory of the state was considered as the property of the supreme power. There are many cases of sale, exchange, mortgage, dowry and bequest of lands by monarchs. This approach is fixed in the treaties of Russia with other states until the 19th century, when the territory of the state began to be considered already the territory on which power is exercised. That is, "the basis of belonging to the territory was the exercise of power within it." And only in the XX century. this approach was supplemented by the principles of the prohibition of the threat or use of force, the inviolability and integrity of the state territory, the inviolability of borders and the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination[5]. The attitude towards the latter principle, in our opinion, is an indicator of discussions on the issue of the formation of boundaries, at least in Russian literature. This was due both to the multi-ethnicity of Russia, and then the USSR and the post-Soviet states, and to various theoretical and methodological schemes that existed in science and practical politics.
The factor of the dependence of social stability and territorial integrity of the state on the national-territorial division is so significant that in post-Soviet Russia, along with proposals for conducting state border policy depending on the interests of the subjects of the Federation[6], there were projects of a complete rejection of the principle of national-territorial division and replacement its territorial principle. In accordance with the latter, the division should be made depending not on the ethnic composition of the population, but on its size and the size of the territory inhabited by it[7].
Already at the beginning of the XX century. in the programs of political parties in Russia, a provision appeared on the need to provide various national-territorial associations with a certain autonomy. The ideas of the Cadets about the need to transform the unitary Russian Empire into a federation enjoyed some popularity among the Europeanized intelligentsia[8]. According to the program amended by the second congress of the Party of People's Freedom (January 1906), Russian legislation was to "guarantee all the peoples inhabiting the empire ... the rights of free cultural self-determination" (p. 11), and also "a legitimate path should be opened in the order of public legislation for establishment of local autonomy” (p. 24). Particularly stipulated was the need to grant an early autonomy to Poland and Finland (p. 25, 26), and “the borders between the Kingdom of Poland and neighboring provinces can be corrected in accordance with the tribal composition and the desire of the local population” (p. 25)[9]. Clarifying the position of the program, S. Kotlyarevsky in "Polyarnaya Zvezda" noted that it is necessary first to extend local self-government to the whole of Russia, "and only then can the real needs of various nationalities and regions be determined"[10]. Thus, the Cadets put forward demands for the transformation of a unitary state into a federal one, and the subjects of the federation could be self-determined both on ethnic and territorial grounds, while the main condition for self-determination was the will of the population. These ideas found ardent support among the intelligentsia of the Muslim regions of the Russian Empire, whose demands for autonomy often went beyond the framework proposed by the Cadets[11]. Among them, the ideas of creating a pan-Turkic or pan-Islamic union with its possible rejection from Russia were widespread[12]. The ideas of autonomism and nationalism were supported at the theoretical level by the work of professional historians. So, three of the seven methodological principles of P.N. Milyukov concerned the national idea[13].
At the same time, the idea of Russia's federalization cannot be considered dominant in Russian social and political thought. Even among liberal currents, there were many supporters of the unitary system, which, in their opinion, guaranteed the territorial integrity of the state. Thus, the very first paragraph of the program of the "Union of October 17" provided for "preservation of its [Russia's] state system of the historically established unitary character"[14].
Before the First World War, the ideas of federalism and centralism coexisted among the Russian Social Democrats. And the positions of their leaders on this issue underwent a certain evolution depending on the change in the current tasks of Russian social democracy. So, in one of the works of V.I. Lenin wrote that the European bourgeoisie, by preaching the ideas of nationalism, was trying to distract the proletariat from the class struggle[15]. In another work, he advocated "for centralization and against petty-bourgeois ideals of federal relations"[16]. As a result, in this case V.I. Lenin and his associates actually supported the idea of Russia's unitarism, since it did not contradict the idea of a single proletarian state.
At the same time, V.I. Lenin emphasized the positivity of Asian nationalism[17]. In addition, the Russian Bolsheviks back in 1912 at the Basel Conference put forward the slogan that the coming imperialist war would develop into a civil war, which was supposed to lead to the formation of the United States of Europe[18] - "the republic of an increasingly centralizing force of this nation and these nations"[19] .
In parallel, other opinions were expressed among the Russian Social Democrats. Already in the first program of the RSDLP, the right to self-determination was recognized for all nations that were part of the state[20]. Finally, in the article by V.I. Lenin "The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" two seemingly incompatible theses - the desire for centralization of power in the future proletarian state and the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination - turned out to be combined in a single scheme. Under the right to self-determination V.I. Lenin now understood "the solution of the question of separation by referendum of the separating nation", but it did not mean the demand for "separation, fragmentation, formation of small states." On the contrary, "recognition of self-determination is not tantamount to recognition of federation as a principle." Self-determination, according to Lenin, is a temporary process, a “transitional period”, which should lead to the inevitable merger of nations[21].
Thus, already at this stage, in the concept of the Russian Social Democrats, there were serious contradictions on issues of nation-building, which later resulted in a combination of incompatible elements - federalism and unitarism (centralism). At the same time, for complete self-determination, according to one of the ideologists of social democracy, L.D. Trotsky, it was recognized as necessary, “so that the state borders that are now splitting them into parts are destroyed; it is necessary that the framework of the state (as an economic, and not a national organization) expand, embracing the whole of capitalist Europe, cut up by customs and borders and now torn apart by war.
Thus, among the Russian liberal and social democratic intelligentsia, there were the following approaches to the issues of a possible change of borders on the eve of the February Revolution:
leave Russia within the borders of 1913 without granting internal autonomy or with granting it to some regions (the Russian version of the European social democratic approach of status quo ante)[23];
grant autonomy to the regions based on the results of a plebiscite, which may also be the basis for changing administrative boundaries;
granting state sovereignty to self-determining nations;
the merger in the future of all European nations into one, the condition for which was to be the overcoming of interstate borders and the formation of a kind of United Europe[24].
Among the supporters of the autocracy, the opinion prevailed about the need to preserve the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia, or even to increase the territories as a future victorious power by including a number of Balkan, Danube and even Asia Minor territories[25]. Moreover, these ideas were also supported by part of the Russian liberal intelligentsia[26]. On the issue of the fate of other multinational states, Russian diplomats advocated recognizing the right to self-determination for the ethnic groups that were part of them[27].
One more direction should be singled out, the representatives of which consistently defended the principles of the primacy of racial, confessional and/or ethnicity. All these movements received the prefix "pan-": pan-Slavism, pan-Islamism, pan-Turkism.
A vivid exponent of the ideas of the pan-Slavic confederation under the auspices of Russia back in the 19th century. the well-known Russian historian and philosopher N.Ya. Danilevsky. His starting thesis was the position that "Every nationality has the right to independent existence to the extent that it creates it and has a claim on it"[28]. In his opinion, Russia and the Slavic peoples are organically incompatible with the rest of Europe. And, being on the verge of an imminent war with Europe, they must unite. The condition for such a union both in the pan-Slavic union and in the rest of Europe is patriotism, but among the Slavs it is ethno-cultural patriotism, and among the Europeans it is political.
The general idea of the Pan-Turkists was the thesis about the need to create a Turkic Federation (either as part of Russia, or under the auspices of Turkey, or as an independent entity). Close to it was the pan-Islamic trend, but it assumed the formation of not a secular, but a religious state, naturally, outside Orthodox Russia[29]. Moreover, many representatives of the national intelligentsia also agreed to autonomy within Russia outside the Turkic or Islamic federation[30].
In 1917, the second (first coalition) Provisional Government declared in a declaration that it intended to defend peace without annexations and indemnities with a guarantee of the right to national self-determination[31]. The declaration remained as such, moreover, soon autonomism began to be regarded as separatism, which caused negative consequences for the self-determining peoples themselves. The same position was taken by the Petrograd Soviet. So, in a conversation with M. Chokaev, the chairman of the Petrosoviet, N.S. Chkheidze said: “Autonomy for a country like your Turkestan, where the population is of a completely different culture, blood, language and religion, this will be a sure step towards separatism, and separatism outside revolutionary and democratic Russia will not be in favor of your people”[32].
However, even the declaration was enough for the First All-Russian Muslim Congress, held in May 1917, to adopt a resolution on the transformation of Russia on a national-territorial federative basis[33]. Similar decisions were made by various congresses of the western national outskirts of Russia[34].
Further development of questions about autonomization, sovereignization, etc. received after the Bolsheviks came to power. Already in the first official document of Soviet Russia - the decree "On Peace" ethnic groups acted as sources and bearers of international law. Offering to conclude a truce for 3 months and negotiate peace, the Decree provided that this issue could be officially resolved only by "representatives of all, without exception, nationalities or nations drawn into the war or forced to participate in it." The Decree proposed to make peace without annexations and indemnities, and annexation was understood, among other things, to keep an ethnic group and the territory inhabited by it within the state[35]. Even more specifically, the right of nations to secede from the state was proclaimed in the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” (November 2 (15), 1917), and the right to “free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia” was also declared here. 36]. True, ideas were also expressed to combine this principle with the principle of "what you own, own it." In particular, in the draft, developed and presented on March 12, 1919 by the representative of the US government Bullitt and the government of the RSFSR, it was noted that “all existing de facto governments in Russia and Finland retain power on their territory, except in cases ... that peoples, those living in the territory administered by the de facto government will themselves wish to change the government”[37]. But in the context of the civil war, this principle did not become, and could not become, fundamental. On the contrary, the first three months after October 1917 seriously changed the existing principles of international relations, including the solution of border problems. At that time absolutely, and for a long time later predominantly, the foreign policy of the Soviet state was dominated by the principle of class internationalism, and not national-state sovereignty. In his article "Two Years of the Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia" People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin wrote: “The Soviet government freely threw its revolutionary slogans to the working masses of the whole world, called on the exhausted peoples to fight against war, proclaimed and carried out, not in words but in deeds, the principle of self-determination of the working people of any nationality, destroyed secret diplomacy, sharply breaking with the imperialist tradition as the publication of secret treaties, and the rejection of all agreements in which the imperialist policy of tsarism was expressed”[38].
Initially, only the first principle was implemented in practice - the right to freely secede from Russia. During the period from December 1917 to January 1919, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars recognized the independence of Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Estland (Estonia), Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus[39], however, it was also envisaged that the Soviet government would be granted the rights of unimpeded transit through all railways and through all the ports of these states[40].
The right to create autonomy within the RSFSR was enshrined in Art. 2 of the Constitution of 1918[41] At the same time, the right to autonomy within Soviet Russia was not realized for some time. Moreover, in 1919, the People's Commissariat for National Affairs published a pamphlet "The National Question and Soviet Russia", which emphasized that "the program does not talk about national self-determination - the slogan is completely vague, but about the slogan more rapped and clearly defined - about the right of peoples to a state department. These are two different things." Only on May 19, 1920, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On the state structure of the Autonomous Soviet Bashkir Republic"[43], which became the first autonomy within the RSFSR[44], was adopted. In the same year, the autonomies of Tataria and Kyrgyzstan (Kazakhstan) were approved[45]. The nature of autonomy can be judged, for example, from the text of the “Appeal of the Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR to all autonomous republics and regions of the RSFSR” (October 1920), which emphasized that “economic and cultural liberation is not thought of by us as a separate and separate existence ... the principle of autonomy should not divide us into a number of small isolated groups and isolate us from the general proletarian movement”[46].
At the same time, a significant part of party and state leaders, including I.V. Stalin, advocated the largest possible territorial association. This was expressed in the projects and practice of creating the Tatar-Bashkir and Mountain Republics, Tatarstan, in a negative attitude towards the Belarusian Republic, which was urgently transformed into the Lithuanian-Belarusian Republic, in the unification of the Transcaucasian republics into the Transcaucasian Federation[47].
Thus, a new factor of delimitation appeared - the large number of self-determining populations and the significant size of the territory occupied by them. This factor found development in the ethnic hierarchy, voiced by I.V. Stalin at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) and then became dominant for many years: ethnic groups were divided into nationalities, peoples and nations[48]. The differences between them were determined by the degree of industrial development and political self-organization of one or another ethnic group[49]. Moreover, only nations could claim state independence[50], while peoples could claim autonomy. The nationalities could only lay claim to the creation of native soviets. The rights of small ethnic groups to organize internal self-government were protected through the creation of the Committee for Assistance to the Peoples of the North under the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, but already in the mid-1930s. it was abolished[51].
Important aspects of the formation of the concept of borders highlight the relationship of Soviet Russia with other states. The union treaties with other Soviet republics are indicative in this respect. Russia renounced ownership in these republics of lands belonging to it and its citizens, real estate, inventory and structures, and the line dividing the states at the time of signing the agreements was recognized as the state border. It was specifically stipulated that the territories "annexed by the former Russian governments" with the consent of the local population go to the national republics[52].
The principles of demarcation and delimitation of the state border are clearly demonstrated by the allied treaties of the RSFSR with the Central Asian Soviet republics - the Khorezm Soviet People's Republic (agreement of September 13, 1920) and the Bukhara Soviet Republic (agreement of March 4, 1921). According to them, the RSFSR recognized as invalid the agreements concluded by the former governments of Russia, on the one hand, and the governments of the Khiva Khanate and the Emirate of Bukhara, on the other. Art. 10 of the treaty of the RSFSR with the KhNSR defined the principles of real delimitation as follows: “when drawing and establishing the border in kind, the said commission [on delimitation] is guided by national and economic characteristics, adhering to natural boundaries whenever possible, and settlements should be entirely part of one state. In those cases when the border passes through lakes, rivers and canals, it is drawn in the middle of these water spaces”[53]. When delimiting, the rights of ethnic groups were also taken into account - Central Asian - in Russia and Russians - in the Central Asian republics. The basis for determining the nationality of the territories inhabited by them and their citizenship was the decision of the congresses of these diasporas. Yes, Art. 13 of the agreement of the RSFSR with the BSR read: “According to the desire of the population of the entire territory expressed at the Regional Congress of Soviets of Russian Settlements in Bukhara (October 1920), the settlements subordinate to the Executive Committee of the above congress, the RSFSR transfers the BSR with all the ensuing consequences, refusing forever from all rights to them.
With regard to demarcation with the eastern and western republics, the approaches of the RSFSR were somewhat different. Along with union treaties, the RSFSR entered into economic agreements, the essence of which was the possibility of unhindered realization of the interests of one state on the territory of another, the destruction of customs barriers and the creation of a single national economic infrastructure. Moreover, many leaders of the RSFSR in relation to the European Soviet republics considered them more significant than the union treaties, and the principle of economic expediency was placed here above the principle of the right of nations to self-determination. For example, it was proposed to divide Ukraine into two economic regions, Belarus was planned to be included in the Western region with a center in Smolensk, and all the Transcaucasian republics - in one Caucasian economic region with a center in Vladikavkaz[55]. With regard to the Western Soviet neighbors, the RSFSR did not provide for their responsibility under the previous treaties of Russia. Thus, the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of December 23, 1918 confirmed that the fact that Estonia (Estonia), Latvia and Lithuania belonged to the old tsarist empire does not impose any obligations on them[56]. With this, the RSFSR denied the principle of "prescription" (or historical claims) of international law.
More significant were the differences in the construction of the border policy of Soviet Russia with non-Soviet states. If the regime of the border of the RSFSR with neighboring Soviet and a number of other states was soft, and the borders themselves were often only a formally delimited line on the map, then the regime of the border with capitalist states was extremely rigid. All procedures, all exports and imports were subject to regulation, emigration and immigration policies were placed under strict control. It should be noted that the RSFSR did not recognize the principle of the presumption of innocence, according to which "everything that is not prohibited is allowed." In the practice of Soviet Russia of this period, the principle “everything that is not allowed is prohibited” even formally operated. So, on December 4, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars approved the Provisional Rules on the Import and Export from Abroad and the Re-Export of Foreign Goods Abroad. According to these rules, only goods purchased and allowed for import by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade were allowed to be imported into the RSFSR, all other goods were considered contraband and were subject to confiscation by customs authorities[57]. In addition, the Soviet government, in relations with its Western neighbors, set the settlement of territorial disputes as a condition for the fulfillment of financial obligations. This, in particular, was announced at the Genoa Conference in April 1922[58]
Western states tried to achieve mitigation of sanctions, especially during the NEP period. This was also stated by representatives of the USSR People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. So, at the 2nd All-Union Conference of the Commissioners of the NKVT of the USSR on January 7, 1924, G.V. Chicherin stated that in Soviet “world politics there is one extremely complex issue. This is the difference between our relationship to the West and our relationship to the East… However, the West is watching what we are doing in the East. We cannot operate in the East regardless of how we operate in the West.”[59]
The formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics became the central moment in determining the national-state structure of the Soviet states. Designed by I.V. Stalin, the project provided for the entry of independent republics into the RSFSR as autonomies. Arguing his project in a letter to V.I. Lenin, he wrote that “if we now try to adapt the form of the relationship between the centers and the outlying areas to the actual relationships, by virtue of which the outlying areas must unconditionally obey the center in everything, i.e. if we do not now replace formal independence with formal autonomy, then in a year it will be incomparably more difficult to defend the unity of the republics”[60]. This actually proposed a project of a formal federation (or an actual unitary structure), which was implemented in the late 1920s. However, in 1922 a draft union federation was adopted, enshrined in the Declaration and the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR of December 30, 1922, which was fully included in 1924 in the text of Section 2 of the Constitution of the USSR.
The text of this Constitution demonstrated continuity with the principles of the Constitution of the RSFSR, adopted on May 10, 1918. According to the first Soviet Constitution, the Soviet state "is established on the basis of a free union of free nations as a federation of Soviet national republics" (Article 2). The central government was responsible for issues of national importance, including issues of establishing and changing state borders, changing the boundaries of the subjects of the RSFSR, admitting other members to the RSFSR and withdrawing from its former members, and a number of other issues (Article 49)[61]. The first Constitution of the USSR clarified these provisions. Thus, the resolution of disputes between the union republics was assigned to the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal bodies (Article 1, w), the right to secede from the USSR was declared for each of the republics (Article 4), and only questions of admission to the USSR remained within the competence of the union bodies. (Article 1, c). The issues of changing the borders of the republics became the subject of joint jurisdiction of the republican and union bodies, in addition, the consent of all the republics was required to change the borders of the territory (Article 6). The sovereignty of the republics was limited only “on subjects falling within the competence of the Union ...” (Article 3)[62], and V.I. Lenin even insisted on establishing the order of leadership in the Union Central Executive Committee depending on ethnicity, so that “a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Georgian, etc., would chair in turn”[63].
Initially, the USSR included four republics - the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR, the ZSFSR, and two of them were themselves federative associations. By the end of 1940, there were already sixteen union republics in the Soviet Union. The expansion of the number of subjects of the USSR occurred in two ways: through the entry of new members, formerly sovereign states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), and through the transformation of autonomous republics into union ones (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan ). Both factors led to the emergence of the Moldavian and Karelian-Finnish republics. By the time of the liquidation of the Soviet Union, fifteen union republics remained, since the Karelian-Finnish SSR was transformed into the Karelian ASSR within the RSFSR. Thus, the process of transformation of autonomous republics into union republics took place mainly, but the opposite way was also possible, and foreign policy factors played an important role here, including the factor of changing the state territory. The process of forming the borders of the union republics as a result of intra-union administrative-territorial demarcation and changes in external borders proceeded throughout the entire period of the existence of the union state. Moreover, its intensity changed over time. The principles of defining administrative boundaries laid the foundation for the further demarcation of the post-Soviet states, but the change in both the concept and the very state borders of the USSR and the principles of its international relations also had a certain significance.
The following scenes are illustrative.
Despite the desire of a number of Soviet leaders to defend through the Comintern "the right to red intervention"[64], in the early 1920s. the course towards an immediate world proletarian revolution was replaced by the doctrine (concept) of “peaceful coexistence of countries with different political systems”[65]. On January 10, 1936, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR at the second session of the Central Executive Committee of the seventh convocation declared that none of the states bordering the Soviet Union “had any reason to feel any concern on our part. On the contrary, even the smallest states, including those whose policies often sway under the pressure of the anti-Soviet forces of the larger imperialist powers, did not have and do not have reason to express concern about the Soviet Union.
During the 1920-1930s. The USSR strove for universal international recognition, but at the same time it did not make territorial concessions to its neighbors in exchange for its own recognition. On the contrary, the Soviet Union in relations with its Western neighbors pursued a policy of returning the territories of the former Russian Empire to the USSR and even expanding them. So, despite the signed Riga peace treaty of March 18, 1921[67], the Soviet side already in August 1924 at the Anglo-Soviet conference raised the question of the return of Eastern Galicia by Poland[68]. In 1939, the issue of transferring the territory of Eastern Poland, the Baltic States and Finland to the USSR became a condition of the Soviet-German agreements[69]. The territories ceded to the Soviet Union became non-autonomous regions of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics[70]. The USSR, evicting Poles from this territory, populated them with Ukrainians and Belarusians[71]. Moreover, in the end, the USSR argued the annexation not by occupation and territorial exchange with the Polish Republic, but as compensation, Poland received East German lands[72].
Relations with other Western neighbors developed in a similar way. On July 1, 1922, an agreement was concluded between Soviet Russia and Finland on measures to ensure the inviolability of the border, which was in effect until 1939.[73] However, already in 1924 there was a border conflict[74]. In 1933-1934. in the Leningrad region, the Finnish population was resettled from areas bordering Finland to areas far from the border[75]. In the spring of 1935, the NKVD carried out an operation “to clear the border strip of the Leningrad Region and Karelia from the kulak and anti-Soviet elements in the order of repression ...”[76]. First of all, all Finns were evicted to Kazakhstan and Western Siberia, except for “former Red partisans, families of Red Army soldiers, changelings and foreign subjects”[77]. The eviction was carried out initially in a 22 km border strip, and then in a 50 km border strip of Karelia and a 100 km strip of special border districts and regions[78]. According to the secret agreements between the USSR and Germany in 1939, Finland was in the zone of interests of the USSR[79]. In the same 1939, the USSR presented Finland with an ultimatum demanding the exchange of Finnish territories near Leningrad for the sparsely populated territories of the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic[80].
This was justified by the need to ensure the security of the industrial centers of the USSR. After an official refusal to satisfy the demands, war was declared on Finland, which ended in March 1940 and had one of the results of the annexation of part of the territory of Finland. According to the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, the territory of the USSR included the Karelian Isthmus, the western and northern shores of Lake Ladoga, the territory east of Merkyarvi from Kuoloyarvi, and part of the Rybachy Peninsula[81]. By order of the NKVD, after joining the USSR, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Norwegians, Lithuanians and Swedes were resettled in these areas[82]. During the Nazi occupation, there was a forced resettlement of Ingrian Finns to Finland, Estonians to Estonia. After the conclusion of the Soviet-Finnish truce in 1944, most of the Ingrian Finns returned to the USSR, but were moved deep into the country. Only in 1956, in connection with the abolition of the 38th article of the Administrative Code, Ingrians received the right to reside in the areas bordering Finland[83]. Finland's entry into the Second World War on the side of the fascist bloc contributed to the international recognition of the territorial changes of 1940.
Based on treaties with Germany[84], the USSR demanded that part of the territory of Romania be transferred to itself, which, after satisfaction of its claims, were included in the Ukrainian SSR and the formed Moldavian SSR.
Territorial tensions also arose between the USSR and the Baltic states. In December 1925, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin at a press conference at the USSR Embassy in France, answering a correspondent's question: “Are your relations with the Baltic countries satisfactory?”, emphasized: “We want to conclude the most durable agreements with each of them in order to strengthen our peaceful and friendly relations, but we strive to avoid everything that would mean the creation of a federation of limitrophe states. In addition to the desire of the USSR government to prevent the creation of a hostile interstate bloc on its borders, it also opposed a number of them to close their territorial waters for the transit of goods from the USSR and to the USSR. In particular, the issue of navigation along the Neman (the so-called Memel issue) was acute. The USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly stated that any agreements on the Memel issue concluded without its participation will be considered illegal, and "the USSR reserves the right to freedom of action along the Neman"[86]. In 1940, units of the Red Army were introduced into Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania under the pretext of preventing the possibility of creating a Baltic union, and in the same year these states became part of the USSR as union republics[87]. At the same time, the territory of the Lithuanian SSR exceeded the territory of bourgeois Lithuania due to the inclusion in its composition of the territories controlled by Germany. As compensation, the USSR undertook to pay Germany 31.5 million German marks[88], i.e. actually by acquiring territory. In addition, areas that were previously part of the BSSR with a predominantly Lithuanian ethnic population were included in the Lithuanian SSR.
At the end of the Great Patriotic War, by decision of the Potsdam Conference, the territories of East Prussia - the city of Koenigsberg (modern city of Kaliningrad) with the adjacent areas[89] - were ceded to the USSR.
In our opinion, all these facts testify to the desire of the USSR government to restore the territory of the former Russian Empire. That is, without recognizing the succession of the USSR from the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union considered geographical continuity as one of the significant sources of the concept of forming its external borders. If in relations with the Western neighbors this position was not openly voiced, then with regard to the Far Eastern regions, the demands for the restoration of the borders of the USSR within the borders of the Russian Empire were clearly indicated. At the Yalta (Crimea) conference, an agreement was adopted, which provided for the restoration of "the rights belonging to Russia, violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904." The USSR got the opportunity to establish its sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it, ensured its predominant interests in the CER and SMW (while maintaining the sovereignty of China), as well as in the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur. In addition, the Kuril Islands were transferred to the USSR, and the MPR retained its independence, in fact, under the tutelage of the Soviet Union[90].
V tselom, k okonchaniyu Vtoroy mirovoy voyny byli v osnovnom sformirovany vneshniye granitsy SSSR[91], sokhranyavshiyesya do momenta likvidatsii SSSR v dekabre 1991 g.[92] Eti granitsy v tselom sovpadali s granitsami Rossiyskoy imperii nachala 1914 g. za isklyucheniyem chasti byvshego Tsarstva Pol'skogo i Velikogo Knyazhestva Finlyandskogo, stavshikh nezavisimymi, i vnov' priobretennykh territoriy Vostochnoy Prussii i Galitsii. Na yuge i vostoke granitsy SSSR voobshche prakticheski sovpadali s granitsami Rossii nachala 1904 g. Takim obrazom, nesmotrya na neodnokratnyy otkaz ot pretenziy na vosstanovleniye territorial'noy tselostnosti Rossii, v osnove kontseptsii formirovaniya granits Sovetskogo Soyuza s 1920-kh gg., a osobenno s kontsa 1930-kh gg. vse bol'shuyu rol' igral faktor «davnosti vladeniya», smenivshiy provozglashennyy Dekretom o mire printsip uti possidentis uta possidentis (chem vladeyete, tem i vladeyte)[93]. Prichem pri izmenenii territorii (prirashchenii) ispol'zovalis' takiye printsipy kak tsessiya, ad"yudikatsiya i okkupatsiya[94], anneksiya[95], a takzhe obmen territoriyami i ikh pokupka. V pervyye gody posle obrazovaniya SSSR v sostave RSFSR byl sozdan ryad novykh avtonomnykh respublik i oblastey. V oktyabre 1923 g. Khorezmskaya NSR, a v sentyabre 1924 g. Bukharskaya NSR byli preobrazovany v sotsialisticheskiye respubliki. Krome togo, v Tsentral'noy Azii v sostave RSFSR nakhodilis' Turkestanskaya i Kazakhskaya ASSR. V oktyabre 1924 g. na baze prezhnikh Turkestanskoy, Bukharskoy i Khorezmskoy respublik byli sozdany soyuznyye respubliki – Uzbekskaya i Turkmenskaya. Chast' territorii Turkestanskoy ASSR byla preobrazovana v Kara-Kirgizskuyu avtonomnuyu oblast' v sostave RSFSR, a v 1936 g. – v Kirgizskuyu SSR. V sostave Uzbekskoy SSR v 1924 g. byla obrazovana Tadzhikskaya ASSR, v 1929 g. ona byla preobrazovana v soyuznuyu respubliku. V maye 1925 g. v sostave Kazakhskoy (byvshey Kirgizskoy) ASSR byla obrazovana Karakalpakskaya avtonomnaya oblast'. V 1932 g. Karakalpakiya stala avtonomnoy respublikoy v sostave RSFSR, a s 1936 g. avtonomnoy respublikoy v sostave Uzbekskoy SSR. V 1936 g. Kazakhskaya ASSR byla preobrazovana v Kazakhskuyu SSR[96]. Osnovnym argumentom izmeneniya statusa etikh respublik yavlyalsya faktor etnicheskogo progressa i formirovaniya na baze narodov sotsialisticheskikh natsiy. V 1936 g. status soyuznykh byl predostavlen takzhe trem chlenam Zakavkazskoy Sovetskoy Federatsii – Azerbaydzhanu, Gruzii i Armenii. Prichem rospusk ZSFR argumentirovalsya takzhe tem, chto ideya regional'noy assotsiatsii napominala Zakavkazskuyu Federatsiyu 1918 g.[97] Izmeneniye statusa, sozdaniye i likvidatsiya avtonomnykh okrugov, oblastey, avtonomnykh i soyuznykh respublik privodili k chastym izmeneniyam administrativno-territorial'nykh granits, a takzhe k perepodchineniyu territoriy i naseleniya tomu ili inomu sub"yektu SSSR. Odnovremenno sushchestvenno menyalis' i granitsy novoobrazovaniy. Naprimer, pervoy stolitsey Kazakhskoy (Kirgizskoy) ASSR yavlyalsya g. Orenburg. V 1925 g. on stal administrativnym tsentrom oblasti v sostave RSFSR, khotya rukovodstvo Bashkirskoy ASSR predlagalo sdelat' yego stolitsey svoyey avtonomnoy respubliki (Orenburg – byvshiy tsentr Orenburgskogo general-gubernatorstva, v sostav kotorogo vkhodili bashkiry)[98]. Kazakhskoye rukovodstvo vyshlo s predlozheniyem sdelat' stolitsey svoyey respubliki g. Omsk (byvshiy tsentr Stepnogo general-gubernatorstva, v vedenii kotorogo byli kazakhi Mladshego i Srednego zhuzov[99]), no stolitsey stal g. Kzyl-Orda (byvshiy g. Perovsk), a s 1929 g. – g. Alma-Ata (byvshiy Vernyy)[100]. V oboikh sluchayakh perenos stolitsy motivirovalsya etnicheskim sostavom naseleniya gorodov, v kotorom litsa titul'noy etnicheskoy gruppy predstavlyali otnositel'noye i absolyutnoye men'shinstvo. Interesno, chto S.M. Kirov predlagal na etom zhe osnovanii peredat' g. Baku iz sostava Azerbaydzhana v sostav RSFSR[101], a v poslevoyennyy period predlagalos' likvidirovat' suverenitet Kirgizskoy SSR i Kazakhskoy SSR, gde dolya titul'noy natsii sostavlyala meneye poloviny naseleniya, a v Kazakhstane, k tomu zhe, znachitel'no ustupala po chislennosti i russkomu naseleniyu respubliki[102].
Ещё
Результаты перевода
In general, by the end of the Second World War, the external borders of the USSR[91] were basically formed, which remained until the liquidation of the USSR in December 1991[92] These borders generally coincided with the borders of the Russian Empire at the beginning of 1914, with the exception of part of the former Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland, which became independent, and the newly acquired territories of East Prussia and Galicia. In the south and east, the borders of the USSR generally practically coincided with the borders of Russia at the beginning of 1904. Thus, despite the repeated rejection of claims to restore the territorial integrity of Russia, the concept of forming the borders of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and especially since the late 1930s, has been based on -s. the factor of “prescription of possession” played an increasingly important role, replacing the principle proclaimed by the Decree on Peace, the principle of uti possidentis uta possidentis (what you own, you own)[93]. Moreover, when changing the territory (increment), such principles as cession, adjudication and occupation[94], annexation[95], as well as the exchange of territories and their purchase were used. In the first years after the formation of the USSR, a number of new autonomous republics and regions were created within the RSFSR. In October 1923 the Khorezm NSR and in September 1924 the Bukhara NSR were transformed into socialist republics. In addition, in Central Asia, the Turkestan and Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics were part of the RSFSR. In October 1924, on the basis of the former Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm republics, union republics were created - Uzbek and Turkmen. Part of the territory of the Turkestan ASSR was transformed into the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region within the RSFSR, and in 1936 into the Kirghiz SSR. As part of the Uzbek SSR, the Tajik ASSR was formed in 1924, and in 1929 it was transformed into a union republic. In May 1925, the Karakalpak Autonomous Region was formed as part of the Kazakh (former Kirghiz) Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1932, Karakalpakstan became an autonomous republic within the RSFSR, and since 1936 an autonomous republic within the Uzbek SSR. In 1936, the Kazakh ASSR was transformed into the Kazakh SSR[96]. The main argument for changing the status of these republics was the factor of ethnic progress and the formation of socialist nations on the basis of the peoples. In 1936, the status of union was also granted to three members of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federation - Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Moreover, the dissolution of the ZSFR was also argued by the fact that the idea of a regional association resembled the Transcaucasian Federation of 1918.[97] The change in status, the creation and liquidation of autonomous districts, regions, autonomous and union republics led to frequent changes in administrative-territorial boundaries, as well as to the resubordination of territories and population to one or another subject of the USSR. At the same time, the boundaries of neoplasms also changed significantly. For example, the first capital of the Kazakh (Kyrgyz) ASSR was the city of Orenburg. In 1925, it became the administrative center of the region as part of the RSFSR, although the leadership of the Bashkir ASSR proposed to make it the capital of their autonomous republic (Orenburg is the former center of the Orenburg Governor General, which included the Bashkirs)[98]. The Kazakh leadership came out with a proposal to make the capital of their republic the city of Omsk (the former center of the Steppe General Government, which was in charge of the Kazakhs of the Younger and Middle Zhuzes[99]), but the capital was the city of Kzyl-Orda (the former city of Perovsk), and since 1929 - the city of Alma-Ata (formerly Verny)[100]. In both cases, the transfer of the capital was motivated by the ethnic composition of the population of cities, in which the persons of the titular ethnic group represented a relative and absolute minority. Interestingly, S.M. Kirov proposed on the same basis to transfer the city of Baku from Azerbaijan to the RSFSR[101], and in the post-war period it was proposed to eliminate the sovereignty of the Kirghiz SSR and the Kazakh SSR, where the share of the titular nation was less than half of the population, and in Kazakhstan, moreover, significantly inferior in number and the Russian population of the republic[102].
In Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s-1930s. administrative boundaries were not clearly defined and changed (especially in the border zone) quite often. Moreover, their change was connected not so much with the desire of the local population[103] as with economic, military and other national tasks. So, until the mid-1930s. the border between the West Siberian regions and the Altai Territory, on the one hand, and Kazakhstan, on the other, was not formalized. On the map of 1932, the border between them was not marked even conditionally[104]. This was explained, in particular, by the fact that Russian and Kazakh farms were assigned to different echelons of collectivization. Depending on the ratio of private and collective farmers, the administration attributed farms and settlements either to Russian regions or to Kazakhstan, because in Russian regions it was supposed to complete the process of complete collectivization of agriculture 1.5-2 years earlier.
The boundaries of farms and the belonging of the population of a number of settlements on the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, especially in the Syrdarya zone, were not clearly defined, which already after the collapse of the USSR caused a number of territorial disputes[105].
The discrepancy between the boundaries of ethnic settlement and administrative boundaries, the different nature of demographic dynamics and migration of the population led to the collapse of the USSR to disputes over the ownership of a number of Central Asian territories. The demands for the expansion of the territory are actively put forward by the Republic of Uzbekistan - in relation to the Leninabad region of the Republic of Tajikistan and in relation to a number of districts of the Osh region of the Kyrgyz Republic[106]. One of the main arguments of the Uzbek side is the issue of a divided Uzbek nation, which local scientists are trying to prove[107]. There are frictions between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the issue of ownership of border water facilities and gas fields[108]. In the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of the Republic of Tajikistan, the issue of joining the Russian Federation was discussed[109]. There are also questions about the ownership of a number of territories and objects in the area of the Russian-Kazakh border, by the way, the longest of the newly emerged land borders[110].
The transformation of administrative borders into state ones also raises the question of belonging to the now largely land territory of the former Aral Sea, and those reservoirs that were formed in its place. To date, the issue of the status of the Caspian Sea has not been fully resolved[111].
A slightly different situation developed in other regions. Changes in the administrative boundaries of a number of subjects of the RSFSR and the republics of Transcaucasia are associated primarily with migration processes, especially with the deportation of entire ethnic groups to Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Siberia.
On August 28, 1941, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region” was adopted[112]. The deportation of the Germans and the liquidation of the Volga German Republic, which was part of the RSFSR as an autonomous one, was explained by the authorities as a threat to the front, since there were supposedly “tens of thousands of saboteurs and spies” in the Volga region[113]. In September, Soviet Germans began to be deported from the southern regions of the RSFSR and the North Caucasian republics[114], and in October 1941 from Transcaucasia[115]. They were predominantly settled in the West Siberian regions and the Altai Territory of the RSFSR and the northern and central regions of the Kazakh SSR. The total number of migrants exceeded 1 million people, so their settlement can be considered relatively compact. The Germans were forbidden to return to the Volga region until 1964[116] The autonomy of the Republic of the Volga Germans was not restored at all. Only in 1979 did the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU decide to create a German autonomous region in Kazakhstan (at that time more than half a million of them lived here). The region was supposed to include a number of districts of Tselinograd, Pavlodar, Karaganda and Kokchetav regions. The administrative center was to be the city of Ermentau. In the future, a number of districts of the Omsk region of the RSFSR with a compact population of ethnic Germans could also be attached to this region. However, in the summer of 1979, spontaneous protests of Kazakh youth began demanding the cancellation of the decision to create German autonomy in Kazakhstan. The party leadership of the Tselinograd region and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR told the demonstrators that the project of creating national-territorial autonomy for the Germans did not exist at all. Thus, in essence, they also opposed the decision of the allied party leadership. This is also confirmed by the fact that after the demonstrations and rallies, not only criminal, but even administrative sanctions against the demonstrators did not follow[117]. Until the early 1990s. no German administrative-territorial formations were ever created, which, to a certain extent, stimulated the outflow of the German population to the FRG. So, only from Kazakhstan in 1992, 135 thousand representatives of German nationality left for permanent residence in Germany, and of all those who left until the mid-1990s. from the Republic of Kazakhstan to foreign countries, the Germans accounted for 78%[118]. Only in 1991, the German National District was created on the territory of the Altai Territory, which included part of the Khabar and Slavgorod regions of the Territory, the administrative center is the village. Halbstadt[119]. This region, although located in relative territorial proximity to the Republic of Kazakhstan, has no access to the state border, being separated from it by the territory of the Burlinsky and Slavgorod regions of the region. It does not have borders with other subjects of the Russian Federation.
During the Great Patriotic War, Kalmyks were deported[120]. Their autonomy and the right to return to the Volga region were returned only in 1956.[121] In April 1944, the People's Commissariats of Internal Affairs and State Security of the USSR carried out "measures to clear the territory of the Crimean ASSR from anti-Soviet elements"[122]. At the suggestion of the NKVD, in May of the same year, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution on the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Uzbekistan[123], later this measure was extended to the Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians living in Crimea, the latter being accused of separatism and an attempt to create an “independent Armenia”. »[124]. In May 1956, the Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians were restored in their rights and they were given permission to settle in the Crimea, the Crimean Tatars were not granted the right to reside on the peninsula[125].
Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were also partially deported, the territories of their republics were changed, but their autonomies were not liquidated[126].
In the period 1942-1944. North Caucasian ethnic groups were also deported: Chechens, Ingush and Balkars[127]. At the same time, Checheno-Ingushetia was liquidated. Of its fourteen districts, eleven became part of the formed Grozny region, and three districts were transferred to the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic[128]. The Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR was renamed the Kabardian ASSR, and part of the territory of the former Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR was included in the Georgian SSR. In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (April 1944), the southwestern part of the Elbrus and Nagorny regions, included in the Upper Svaneti region, went to the Georgian SSR[129].
The ban on return was lifted from the Karachays in 1957, at the same time the Cherkess region was transformed into the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Region as part of the Stavropol Territory, and its administrative borders were changed[130].
The need to improve the conditions for protecting the state border of the USSR (in the text of the document - the Georgian SSR (!) - A.B.) was explained by the deportation from the border strip (Akhaltsik, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanov regions and the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) of ethnic Meskhetian Turks, Kurds and Khemshins who did not have their own autonomous entities. Back in 1937, the same measure was applied to the Kurds living in the border zone of the Armenian SSR[131]. By mistake, the Lazes, who bore Turkic surnames, were also mistaken for Meskhetian Turks[132]. The Laz were allowed to return to their homeland in October 1945.[133]
In 1947, an armed detachment of Kurds, numbering about five hundred people, led by M. Borzani, broke into the territory of the USSR from Iran; keep in touch with the resettled Kurds and influence them”[134].
The Azerbaijani-Iranian border, drawn along the Araks River after the conclusion of the Turkmanchay Treaty in 1828, divided the Azerbaijani ethnos into subjects of Russia and Persia. This factor became one of the catalysts for the national movement. In the 1940s after the entry of Soviet troops into Iran, the Azerbaijanis had hopes that they would be able to unite Azerbaijan following the example of Ukraine and Belarus. He also played a role in the rise of the national movement in the 1980s and 1990s, when demands were also made for the elimination of the border and the creation of a “united Azerbaijan”[135].
Another threat to the stability of interstate, and formerly inter-republican, administrative borders is the compact enclave residence of non-titular ethnic groups, both in the immediate vicinity of the border and at a distance from it. In the same Azerbaijan since the 19th century. a policy of resettlement of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh was carried out. The consequences came at the end of the 20th century. On February 20, 1988, the Armenian majority of the Regional Council of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) adopted a resolution demanding the transfer of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR, which was immediately supported by the majority of the Armenian society, becoming the "national idea" of the Armenians[136]. The Azerbaijani authorities were unable to resolve the brewing conflict by peaceful means - they resulted in the Sumgayit and a number of other Armenian pogroms. In January 1989, the All-Union Committee for the Special Administration of the NKAO was created, and on January 15, 1990, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On declaring a state of emergency in the NKAR and some other regions” was issued[137]. In fact, the NKAO was withdrawn from the Azerbaijani and transferred to the allied subordination, but soon the republican leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR opposed such a situation. The leadership of the Armenian SSR, for its part, took a number of measures aimed at reassigning the NKAO to it. This resulted in a war between first allied and then independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, culminating in the offensive of the Armenian army in 1993, which resulted in 20% of the territory of the former Azerbaijan SSR under Armenian control. The Armenian side found justification for its territorial claims not only by referring to the factor of a divided nation, but also by historical heritage - back in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Armenia demanded the expansion of its borders, which almost coincided with those actually formed by the autumn of 1993.[138]
A difficult situation, largely the result of an ill-conceived national and administrative-territorial policy, has also developed in Georgia. Here the problems are connected with South Ossetia – once again there is the question of a divided nation, especially since there is also a subject of the Russian Federation on the border – North Ossetia. There is also a difficult situation with the de facto independent Abkhazia, which also enjoys some support from neighboring Russia.
Georgia is one of the polyethnic formations. During the period when it was a union republic, Georgia was a federation. The deportation of some peoples was accompanied here by the settlement of the liberated territory by other ethnic groups. It is also important that on the territory of Georgia, before it became part of Russia, there were various state entities - Kartli-Kakheti (attached to Russia in 1783-1801), Mingrelia (1803), Imereti and Guria (1804), the Black Sea coast, including Abkhazia (1826-1827). The administrative borders of Georgia changed both within the Russian Empire and within the USSR. Starting from the 1930s, a policy of Georgianization was carried out in its autonomous republics, which in the 1980s. even resulted in an attempt at "state regulation of the birth rate of the non-Georgian population." At the same time, the leadership of the Georgian SSR pursued a policy of "dearmenization" and "de-Azerbaijanization" of the border territories. With Z. Gamsakhurdia coming to power in 1990, Tbilisi's position in relation to the Abkhazians, Ossetians and other ethnic minorities became tougher. In 1990, part of the Dagestan Avars, Russian Doukhobors, was expelled from the republic, the Meskhetian Turks were denied the right to return, and a war began against the population of South Ossetia.
The new Georgian leadership, headed by Z. Gamsakhurdia, proclaimed a course towards the modernization of the state and society and the creation of a unitary state on the European model. Representatives of the Georgian nation were to become the basis of the new state. This internal political course led to the opposite result: instead of consolidating the population, Georgia began to disintegrate along ethno-territorial lines. The borders of the collapse were the borders of autonomies. It is indicative that if the population of Georgia (without autonomies) voted in a referendum in 1991 for the collapse of the USSR, then the population of the autonomous republics of the Georgian SSR voted for its preservation. Ultimately, this policy led to the declaration of state independence of the three subjects of Georgia, and the attempt to restore Georgian sovereignty by military means ended in failure for Tbilisi[139]. Currently, Russian peacekeepers are stationed on the Georgian-Abkhazian border, and the administrative border has, in fact, turned into a front line.
The western republics of the former USSR also have their own peculiarities of border issues. One of the issues related to the history of deportations and administrative-territorial reforms in the USSR is the question of the status of Crimea and, accordingly, its borders. After the abolition of the Crimean ASSR within the RSFSR in 1944, Crimea remained within the RSFSR as a region. In 1954, on the personal initiative of N.S. Khrushchev, former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR[140]. This was motivated by economic necessity, since, allegedly, the Crimean industry was more closely connected with the Ukrainian industry and other sectors of the national economy than with the Russian one. An attempt by the party leadership of the region to express doubts about the appropriateness of these changes led to the removal of the first secretary of the Crimean regional committee, D. Polyansky[141]. All this created the prerequisites for the emergence of a territorial dispute between modern Ukraine and the Russian Federation. There are also hypothetical options for the isolation of Crimea or the emergence of a Crimean Tatar autonomy here as part of one of the states. For a long time, an additional factor that destabilized relations between Russia and Ukraine was the question of ownership of the Black Sea Fleet of the former USSR[142]. Another issue that arose as a result of the liquidation of the USSR was the question of the status of the Sea of Azov. Only in December 2001 was it resolved, and now the Sea of Azov is an inland water body of the two states[143]. However, now the problem of dividing this reservoir may arise.
For Ukraine, the question of the state border with Romania also remains open. Bucharest officially made claims to a part of the Chernivtsi region, considering the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the USSR ultimatum of 1940 on the transfer of part of the territory of Romania to it illegal (see above). And, despite the fact that in June 1997 Bucharest renounced territorial claims[144], this issue cannot be considered fully settled.
The problems of changing the external and internal borders, as well as the peculiarities of the ethno-demographic situation, to a large extent leave an imprint on the modern life of the Republic of Moldova. There are real political forces here that are in favor of reunification with Romania and the elimination of the Moldovan-Romanian border. However, separatism is no less a threat. Starting with the fact that the Gagauz managed to achieve the creation of autonomy in Moldova and its transformation from a de facto unitary state into a federal state[145], it received its further development in the Slavic separatism of Transnistria, the status of which has not yet been determined, but the population itself considers its existence as legitimate, as independent Transnistrian Republic[146], and as an autonomous republic within Ukraine or Russia. It is possible and, apparently, the most acceptable option, in which the Transnistrian Republic will receive broad autonomy within Moldova as a subject of a federation or confederation.
The status of the border is of some importance for the development of Russian-Belarusian relations, but here the unresolved issues are based on the problem of determining the status of administrative units within the Union of Russia and Belarus. Depending on how the Union is viewed as a federation or confederation, there are options for turning Belarus into a subject of the Russian Federation and into six subjects - according to the number of Belarusian regions, or it will be a Union of two equal subjects[147].
After the collapse of the USSR, Belarus and the Russian Federation had friction with the Baltic republics. The territory of Latvia and Estonia, compared with the size of 1940, was somewhat reduced after the war in favor of the RSFSR (especially the Pskov region). At the same time, the territory of the Lithuanian SSR expanded significantly compared to the territory of bourgeois Lithuania in the second-fourth decades of the 20th century. From the BSSR, the Vilnius Territory was transferred to its composition, as well as the Klaipeda (Memel) Territory, which was under the control of Germany, and which, as noted above, was redeemed by the Soviet Union. However, there are no documents proving that the USSR transferred the Klaipeda region under the full jurisdiction of the Lithuanian SSR. This serves as the basis for possible territorial claims against Lithuania by Russia. Moreover, experts’ assessments made at the same time about the possibility and prospects of territorial tensions are different: if Lithuanian experts note that border issues are used in Russia “for an internal audience and are unlikely to have international consequences”[148], then Russian experts note that that “the border issue may again return to the level of interstate relations between Lithuania and Russia, acquiring an even sharper and more scandalous character”[149]. In addition to the Klaipeda region, a possible disputed area of the "new borders" is the question of belonging to the Kaliningrad region. On this occasion, there are the following foreign policy projects: the creation of a German autonomy here within the Russian Federation; creation of a condominium managed by Germany, Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Sweden; creation of an independent Russian Baltic republic; the return of the Kaliningrad region to the jurisdiction of Germany; and, finally, the transition of the Kaliningrad enclave of the Russian Federation under the sovereignty of the Republic of Lithuania under the name of the Karalyauchyus region. Moreover, the latter option is supported at the highest level of the Lithuanian leadership, up to V. Landsbergis[150]. At the same time, in relation to the territory of Lithuania itself (Vilnius region, including the capital of modern Lithuania), claims can be made by neighboring Belarus. One of the arguments of the supporters of such a development of interstate relations (for example, the Belarusian Popular Front) is the demand for the restoration of historical justice and the restoration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania[151], but already under the sovereignty of Belarus (!). And, despite the signing in 1994-1997. a number of agreements on the border regime and on the delimitation of the border[152], this issue can be used as an instrument of pressure on Lithuania, especially in connection with the prospect of turning the Union of Russia and Belarus from a legal into a de facto Union.
Thus, the principles of inter-republican relations in solving border issues were somewhat different from international ones. First, the principles of occupation and annexation did not work. Secondly, the subjective factor (for example, the position of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU) and the factor of economic expediency (real or imaginary) played a greater role than in interstate relations. The third, most important, difference in the formation of internal borders was the absence of a border regime, the lack of demarcation of these borders, and, often, their vague delimitation. The principles of border formation (both internal and external) that were in force in the Russian Empire and the USSR have a serious impact on the current situation. In all fifteen post-Soviet states recognized by the UN, there are border-territorial problems caused by the historical legacy of being part of the Russian Empire and the USSR. In all these states, mutual territorial claims are associated with a change in the former administrative (internal) borders in a given period, and in most post-Soviet states, they are also associated with changes in the state (external) borders of the USSR. There are problems both with the settlement of land and water borders. For the post-Soviet states, separatism poses a threat to territorial integrity, and everywhere it has the character of ethnic separatism and finds its justification in one of the principles of international law - the right of nations to self-determination, which in this case comes into conflict with the principle of state sovereignty on its own territory. It should be noted that the first principle, which initially lay in the doctrine of the government of the RSFSR and the USSR, turned into the 1930s. into a formality. However, over time, especially after the Great Patriotic War, the national elites were gradually able to concentrate significant powers in autonomous formations, thereby ensuring their political independence by the time of the collapse of the USSR (and largely predetermining this collapse). From a certain time, the leadership of the USSR began to realize the threat of ethno-territorial division arising from the dominance of the principle of the nation's right to self-determination. This can be seen from the materials of the works of historians of that time, especially the period of the 1940-1950s (see the correspondence of B.D. Grekov, E.V. Tarle, A.M. Pankratova, etc.), but it turned out to be impossible to change priorities , and the principle of proletarian internationalism, which, according to the party leadership, was an alternative, in practice turned out to be only a screen, under the veil of which the processes of separatism proceeded. At the same time, the issue of borders between the republics became one of the indicators of this process.
The historical legacy has, and will for a long time to come, have its impact on a variety of processes in the post-Soviet space, one of the manifestations of this will be border issues, where, in the event of friction, historical argumentation is one of the main sources of claims. Discussions of modern supporters of European or other forms of integration, supporters of the ideas of autonomism and separatism, unitary, federal or confederal structure, etc. are similar to those that were conducted at the beginning of the 20th century, and the argumentation of the adherents of these paradigms has not undergone any significant changes.
Read other articles by the author
In Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s-1930s. administrative boundaries were not clearly defined and changed (especially in the border zone) quite often. Moreover, their change was connected not so much with the desire of the local population[103] as with economic, military and other national tasks. So, until the mid-1930s. the border between the West Siberian regions and the Altai Territory, on the one hand, and Kazakhstan, on the other, was not formalized. On the map of 1932, the border between them was not marked even conditionally[104]. This was explained, in particular, by the fact that Russian and Kazakh farms were assigned to different echelons of collectivization. Depending on the ratio of private and collective farmers, the administration attributed farms and settlements either to Russian regions or to Kazakhstan, because in Russian regions it was supposed to complete the process of complete collectivization of agriculture 1.5-2 years earlier.
The boundaries of farms and the belonging of the population of a number of settlements on the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, especially in the Syrdarya zone, were not clearly defined, which already after the collapse of the USSR caused a number of territorial disputes[105].
The discrepancy between the boundaries of ethnic settlement and administrative boundaries, the different nature of demographic dynamics and migration of the population led to the collapse of the USSR to disputes over the ownership of a number of Central Asian territories. The demands for the expansion of the territory are actively put forward by the Republic of Uzbekistan - in relation to the Leninabad region of the Republic of Tajikistan and in relation to a number of districts of the Osh region of the Kyrgyz Republic[106]. One of the main arguments of the Uzbek side is the issue of a divided Uzbek nation, which local scientists are trying to prove[107]. There are frictions between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the issue of ownership of border water facilities and gas fields[108]. In the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of the Republic of Tajikistan, the issue of joining the Russian Federation was discussed[109]. There are also questions about the ownership of a number of territories and objects in the area of the Russian-Kazakh border, by the way, the longest of the newly emerged land borders[110].
The transformation of administrative borders into state ones also raises the question of belonging to the now largely land territory of the former Aral Sea, and those reservoirs that were formed in its place. To date, the issue of the status of the Caspian Sea has not been fully resolved[111].
A slightly different situation developed in other regions. Changes in the administrative boundaries of a number of subjects of the RSFSR and the republics of Transcaucasia are associated primarily with migration processes, especially with the deportation of entire ethnic groups to Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Siberia.
On August 28, 1941, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region” was adopted[112]. The deportation of the Germans and the liquidation of the Volga German Republic, which was part of the RSFSR as an autonomous one, was explained by the authorities as a threat to the front, since there were supposedly “tens of thousands of saboteurs and spies” in the Volga region[113]. In September, Soviet Germans began to be deported from the southern regions of the RSFSR and the North Caucasian republics[114], and in October 1941 from Transcaucasia[115]. They were predominantly settled in the West Siberian regions and the Altai Territory of the RSFSR and the northern and central regions of the Kazakh SSR. The total number of migrants exceeded 1 million people, so their settlement can be considered relatively compact. The Germans were forbidden to return to the Volga region until 1964[116] The autonomy of the Republic of the Volga Germans was not restored at all. Only in 1979 did the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU decide to create a German autonomous region in Kazakhstan (at that time more than half a million of them lived here). The region was supposed to include a number of districts of Tselinograd, Pavlodar, Karaganda and Kokchetav regions. The administrative center was to be the city of Ermentau. In the future, a number of districts of the Omsk region of the RSFSR with a compact population of ethnic Germans could also be attached to this region. However, in the summer of 1979, spontaneous protests of Kazakh youth began demanding the cancellation of the decision to create German autonomy in Kazakhstan. The party leadership of the Tselinograd region and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR told the demonstrators that the project of creating national-territorial autonomy for the Germans did not exist at all. Thus, in essence, they also opposed the decision of the allied party leadership. This is also confirmed by the fact that after the demonstrations and rallies, not only criminal, but even administrative sanctions against the demonstrators did not follow[117]. Until the early 1990s. no German administrative-territorial formations were ever created, which, to a certain extent, stimulated the outflow of the German population to the FRG. So, only from Kazakhstan in 1992, 135 thousand representatives of German nationality left for permanent residence in Germany, and of all those who left until the mid-1990s. from the Republic of Kazakhstan to foreign countries, the Germans accounted for 78%[118]. Only in 1991, the German National District was created on the territory of the Altai Territory, which included part of the Khabar and Slavgorod regions of the Territory, the administrative center is the village. Halbstadt[119]. This region, although located in relative territorial proximity to the Republic of Kazakhstan, has no access to the state border, being separated from it by the territory of the Burlinsky and Slavgorod regions of the region. It does not have borders with other subjects of the Russian Federation.
During the Great Patriotic War, Kalmyks were deported[120]. Their autonomy and the right to return to the Volga region were returned only in 1956.[121] In April 1944, the People's Commissariats of Internal Affairs and State Security of the USSR carried out "measures to clear the territory of the Crimean ASSR from anti-Soviet elements"[122]. At the suggestion of the NKVD, in May of the same year, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution on the deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Uzbekistan[123], later this measure was extended to the Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians living in Crimea, the latter being accused of separatism and an attempt to create an “independent Armenia”. »[124]. In May 1956, the Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians were restored in their rights and they were given permission to settle in the Crimea, the Crimean Tatars were not granted the right to reside on the peninsula[125].
Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were also partially deported, the territories of their republics were changed, but their autonomies were not liquidated[126].
In the period 1942-1944. North Caucasian ethnic groups were also deported: Chechens, Ingush and Balkars[127]. At the same time, Checheno-Ingushetia was liquidated. Of its fourteen districts, eleven became part of the formed Grozny region, and three districts were transferred to the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic[128]. The Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR was renamed the Kabardian ASSR, and part of the territory of the former Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR was included in the Georgian SSR. In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (April 1944), the southwestern part of the Elbrus and Nagorny regions, included in the Upper Svaneti region, went to the Georgian SSR[129].
The ban on return was lifted from the Karachays in 1957, at the same time the Cherkess region was transformed into the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Region as part of the Stavropol Territory, and its administrative borders were changed[130].
The need to improve the conditions for protecting the state border of the USSR (in the text of the document - the Georgian SSR (!) - A.B.) was explained by the deportation from the border strip (Akhaltsik, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanov regions and the Adjara Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) of ethnic Meskhetian Turks, Kurds and Khemshins who did not have their own autonomous entities. Back in 1937, the same measure was applied to the Kurds living in the border zone of the Armenian SSR[131]. By mistake, the Lazes, who bore Turkic surnames, were also mistaken for Meskhetian Turks[132]. The Laz were allowed to return to their homeland in October 1945.[133]
In 1947, an armed detachment of Kurds, numbering about five hundred people, led by M. Borzani, broke into the territory of the USSR from Iran; keep in touch with the resettled Kurds and influence them”[134].
The Azerbaijani-Iranian border, drawn along the Araks River after the conclusion of the Turkmanchay Treaty in 1828, divided the Azerbaijani ethnos into subjects of Russia and Persia. This factor became one of the catalysts for the national movement. In the 1940s after the entry of Soviet troops into Iran, the Azerbaijanis had hopes that they would be able to unite Azerbaijan following the example of Ukraine and Belarus. He also played a role in the rise of the national movement in the 1980s and 1990s, when demands were also made for the elimination of the border and the creation of a “united Azerbaijan”[135].
Another threat to the stability of interstate, and formerly inter-republican, administrative borders is the compact enclave residence of non-titular ethnic groups, both in the immediate vicinity of the border and at a distance from it. In the same Azerbaijan since the 19th century. a policy of resettlement of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh was carried out. The consequences came at the end of the 20th century. On February 20, 1988, the Armenian majority of the Regional Council of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) adopted a resolution demanding the transfer of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR, which was immediately supported by the majority of the Armenian society, becoming the "national idea" of the Armenians[136]. The Azerbaijani authorities were unable to resolve the brewing conflict by peaceful means - they resulted in the Sumgayit and a number of other Armenian pogroms. In January 1989, the All-Union Committee for the Special Administration of the NKAO was created, and on January 15, 1990, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On declaring a state of emergency in the NKAR and some other regions” was issued[137]. In fact, the NKAO was withdrawn from the Azerbaijani and transferred to the allied subordination, but soon the republican leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR opposed such a situation. The leadership of the Armenian SSR, for its part, took a number of measures aimed at reassigning the NKAO to it. This resulted in a war between first allied and then independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, culminating in the offensive of the Armenian army in 1993, which resulted in 20% of the territory of the former Azerbaijan SSR under Armenian control. The Armenian side found justification for its territorial claims not only by referring to the factor of a divided nation, but also by historical heritage - back in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Armenia demanded the expansion of its borders, which almost coincided with those actually formed by the autumn of 1993.[138]
A difficult situation, largely the result of an ill-conceived national and administrative-territorial policy, has also developed in Georgia. Here the problems are connected with South Ossetia – once again there is the question of a divided nation, especially since there is also a subject of the Russian Federation on the border – North Ossetia. There is also a difficult situation with the de facto independent Abkhazia, which also enjoys some support from neighboring Russia.
Georgia is one of the polyethnic formations. During the period when it was a union republic, Georgia was a federation. The deportation of some peoples was accompanied here by the settlement of the liberated territory by other ethnic groups. It is also important that on the territory of Georgia, before it became part of Russia, there were various state entities - Kartli-Kakheti (attached to Russia in 1783-1801), Mingrelia (1803), Imereti and Guria (1804), the Black Sea coast, including Abkhazia (1826-1827). The administrative borders of Georgia changed both within the Russian Empire and within the USSR. Starting from the 1930s, a policy of Georgianization was carried out in its autonomous republics, which in the 1980s. even resulted in an attempt at "state regulation of the birth rate of the non-Georgian population." At the same time, the leadership of the Georgian SSR pursued a policy of "dearmenization" and "de-Azerbaijanization" of the border territories. With Z. Gamsakhurdia coming to power in 1990, Tbilisi's position in relation to the Abkhazians, Ossetians and other ethnic minorities became tougher. In 1990, part of the Dagestan Avars, Russian Doukhobors, was expelled from the republic, the Meskhetian Turks were denied the right to return, and a war began against the population of South Ossetia.
The new Georgian leadership, headed by Z. Gamsakhurdia, proclaimed a course towards the modernization of the state and society and the creation of a unitary state on the European model. Representatives of the Georgian nation were to become the basis of the new state. This internal political course led to the opposite result: instead of consolidating the population, Georgia began to disintegrate along ethno-territorial lines. The borders of the collapse were the borders of autonomies. It is indicative that if the population of Georgia (without autonomies) voted in a referendum in 1991 for the collapse of the USSR, then the population of the autonomous republics of the Georgian SSR voted for its preservation. Ultimately, this policy led to the declaration of state independence of the three subjects of Georgia, and the attempt to restore Georgian sovereignty by military means ended in failure for Tbilisi[139]. Currently, Russian peacekeepers are stationed on the Georgian-Abkhazian border, and the administrative border has, in fact, turned into a front line.
The western republics of the former USSR also have their own peculiarities of border issues. One of the issues related to the history of deportations and administrative-territorial reforms in the USSR is the question of the status of Crimea and, accordingly, its borders. After the abolition of the Crimean ASSR within the RSFSR in 1944, Crimea remained within the RSFSR as a region. In 1954, on the personal initiative of N.S. Khrushchev, former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR[140]. This was motivated by economic necessity, since, allegedly, the Crimean industry was more closely connected with the Ukrainian industry and other sectors of the national economy than with the Russian one. An attempt by the party leadership of the region to express doubts about the appropriateness of these changes led to the removal of the first secretary of the Crimean regional committee, D. Polyansky[141]. All this created the prerequisites for the emergence of a territorial dispute between modern Ukraine and the Russian Federation. There are also hypothetical options for the isolation of Crimea or the emergence of a Crimean Tatar autonomy here as part of one of the states. For a long time, an additional factor that destabilized relations between Russia and Ukraine was the question of ownership of the Black Sea Fleet of the former USSR[142]. Another issue that arose as a result of the liquidation of the USSR was the question of the status of the Sea of Azov. Only in December 2001 was it resolved, and now the Sea of Azov is an inland water body of the two states[143]. However, now the problem of dividing this reservoir may arise.
For Ukraine, the question of the state border with Romania also remains open. Bucharest officially made claims to a part of the Chernivtsi region, considering the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the USSR ultimatum of 1940 on the transfer of part of the territory of Romania to it illegal (see above). And, despite the fact that in June 1997 Bucharest renounced territorial claims[144], this issue cannot be considered fully settled.
The problems of changing the external and internal borders, as well as the peculiarities of the ethno-demographic situation, to a large extent leave an imprint on the modern life of the Republic of Moldova. There are real political forces here that are in favor of reunification with Romania and the elimination of the Moldovan-Romanian border. However, separatism is no less a threat. Starting with the fact that the Gagauz managed to achieve the creation of autonomy in Moldova and its transformation from a de facto unitary state into a federal state[145], it received its further development in the Slavic separatism of Transnistria, the status of which has not yet been determined, but the population itself considers its existence as legitimate, as independent Transnistrian Republic[146], and as an autonomous republic within Ukraine or Russia. It is possible and, apparently, the most acceptable option, in which the Transnistrian Republic will receive broad autonomy within Moldova as a subject of a federation or confederation.
The status of the border is of some importance for the development of Russian-Belarusian relations, but here the unresolved issues are based on the problem of determining the status of administrative units within the Union of Russia and Belarus. Depending on how the Union is viewed as a federation or confederation, there are options for turning Belarus into a subject of the Russian Federation and into six subjects - according to the number of Belarusian regions, or it will be a Union of two equal subjects[147].
After the collapse of the USSR, Belarus and the Russian Federation had friction with the Baltic republics. The territory of Latvia and Estonia, compared with the size of 1940, was somewhat reduced after the war in favor of the RSFSR (especially the Pskov region). At the same time, the territory of the Lithuanian SSR expanded significantly compared to the territory of bourgeois Lithuania in the second-fourth decades of the 20th century. From the BSSR, the Vilnius Territory was transferred to its composition, as well as the Klaipeda (Memel) Territory, which was under the control of Germany, and which, as noted above, was redeemed by the Soviet Union. However, there are no documents proving that the USSR transferred the Klaipeda region under the full jurisdiction of the Lithuanian SSR. This serves as the basis for possible territorial claims against Lithuania by Russia. Moreover, experts’ assessments made at the same time about the possibility and prospects of territorial tensions are different: if Lithuanian experts note that border issues are used in Russia “for an internal audience and are unlikely to have international consequences”[148], then Russian experts note that that “the border issue may again return to the level of interstate relations between Lithuania and Russia, acquiring an even sharper and more scandalous character”[149]. In addition to the Klaipeda region, a possible disputed area of the "new borders" is the question of belonging to the Kaliningrad region. On this occasion, there are the following foreign policy projects: the creation of a German autonomy here within the Russian Federation; creation of a condominium managed by Germany, Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Sweden; creation of an independent Russian Baltic republic; the return of the Kaliningrad region to the jurisdiction of Germany; and, finally, the transition of the Kaliningrad enclave of the Russian Federation under the sovereignty of the Republic of Lithuania under the name of the Karalyauchyus region. Moreover, the latter option is supported at the highest level of the Lithuanian leadership, up to V. Landsbergis[150]. At the same time, in relation to the territory of Lithuania itself (Vilnius region, including the capital of modern Lithuania), claims can be made by neighboring Belarus. One of the arguments of the supporters of such a development of interstate relations (for example, the Belarusian Popular Front) is the demand for the restoration of historical justice and the restoration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania[151], but already under the sovereignty of Belarus (!). And, despite the signing in 1994-1997. a number of agreements on the border regime and on the delimitation of the border[152], this issue can be used as an instrument of pressure on Lithuania, especially in connection with the prospect of turning the Union of Russia and Belarus from a legal into a de facto Union.
Thus, the principles of inter-republican relations in solving border issues were somewhat different from international ones. First, the principles of occupation and annexation did not work. Secondly, the subjective factor (for example, the position of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU) and the factor of economic expediency (real or imaginary) played a greater role than in interstate relations. The third, most important, difference in the formation of internal borders was the absence of a border regime, the lack of demarcation of these borders, and, often, their vague delimitation. The principles of border formation (both internal and external) that were in force in the Russian Empire and the USSR have a serious impact on the current situation. In all fifteen post-Soviet states recognized by the UN, there are border-territorial problems caused by the historical legacy of being part of the Russian Empire and the USSR. In all these states, mutual territorial claims are associated with a change in the former administrative (internal) borders in a given period, and in most post-Soviet states, they are also associated with changes in the state (external) borders of the USSR. There are problems both with the settlement of land and water borders. For the post-Soviet states, separatism poses a threat to territorial integrity, and everywhere it has the character of ethnic separatism and finds its justification in one of the principles of international law - the right of nations to self-determination, which in this case comes into conflict with the principle of state sovereignty on its own territory. It should be noted that the first principle, which initially lay in the doctrine of the government of the RSFSR and the USSR, turned into the 1930s. into a formality. However, over time, especially after the Great Patriotic War, the national elites were gradually able to concentrate significant powers in autonomous formations, thereby ensuring their political independence by the time of the collapse of the USSR (and largely predetermining this collapse). From a certain time, the leadership of the USSR began to realize the threat of ethno-territorial division arising from the dominance of the principle of the nation's right to self-determination. This can be seen from the materials of the works of historians of that time, especially the period of the 1940-1950s (see the correspondence of B.D. Grekov, E.V. Tarle, A.M. Pankratova, etc.), but it turned out to be impossible to change priorities , and the principle of proletarian internationalism, which, according to the party leadership, was an alternative, in practice turned out to be only a screen, under the veil of which the processes of separatism proceeded. At the same time, the issue of borders between the republics became one of the indicators of this process.
The historical legacy has, and will for a long time to come, have its impact on a variety of processes in the post-Soviet space, one of the manifestations of this will be border issues, where, in the event of friction, historical argumentation is one of the main sources of claims. Discussions of modern supporters of European or other forms of integration, supporters of the ideas of autonomism and separatism, unitary, federal or confederal structure, etc. are similar to those that were conducted at the beginning of the 20th century, and the argumentation of the adherents of these paradigms has not undergone any significant changes.
Read other articles by the author
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND SEMINARS OF THE CHAIR
PhD PROGRAM, SINGAPORE
PRE-DBA COURSES, SINGAPORE
DISTANCE SEMINARS
EU CERTIFICATION
CHAIR OF SOCIO-HUMANITARIAN DISCIPLINES IRIAS IN RUSSIA
SUBSCRIPTION TO NEWS OF THE CHAIR
Forums, Conferences, Lectures, Seminars, Presentations, Cultural Events, Business Receptions, Online Events
