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Crimea: Transforming the Ukrainian Peninsula into a Russian Island
Abstract
The accelerated integration of Crimea into Russia's state system illuminates the overall sociopolitical process in Russia. The process was largely improved, with various agencies each pursuing its own course of action. Some were formed on the basis of existing Ukrainian institutions, while others were created de novo. In some cases, locals were given senior positions, while in others the top posts were assigned to appointees from other regions who had no previous ties to Crimea. Overall, Moscow was careful to take into account local factors, such as the role of the Crimean Tatar population. The situation remains fluid, with many state institutions still subject to modification.
... Despite also having the status of a "republic" within the Russian Federation (according to the Russian state), Crimea, in contrast with Tatarstan, has been governed much more directly by state officials from Moscow since Russia's 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Nikolai Petrov has described the local political environment of Crimea in the wake of 2014 as "organized according to vertical power" emanating directly from Moscow-based federal officials, who Petrov calls the Crimea "commissars" (Petrov, 2016). ...
... The first was an attempt in 2014-2015 to coordinate local Crimean politicians through the Ministry of Crimean Affairs. The second phase (still ongoing) came with the dissolution of the Ministry of Crimean Affairs and the institutionalization of governance that is "less transparent[…] and primarily organised according to vertical power" by filling "the governing bodies of Crimea and Sevastopol with federal officials, who were appointed as first deputy ministers in local government" (Petrov, 2016). Petrov calls these federal officials "commissars," who embody the model of internal, participant control of the "centre" in affairs across all the Crimean ministries (Petrov, 2015, p. 10). ...
Analysis of journalistic fields is dominated by approaches that take news media at the nation-state level as the major unit of analysis. More recently, sociologists have asked whether we can speak of global journalistic fields. Many scholars have concluded that global journalistic fields are weak at best, and news production remains bounded by nation-states. This paper offers a more fine-tuned understanding of the boundaries of journalistic fields. Drawing on an interview-based qualitative study of regional journalistic fields in contemporary Crimea (a region of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014) and in Tatarstan (a region of Russia), I answer the questions “how do states shape the autonomy of regional journalistic fields?” and “how do journalists navigate the limitations they face?” I advance two arguments: first, journalistic fields can be understood as multiscalar fields, and the practices of journalists are shaped by the configuration of political relations along different scales simultaneously (the scale of the city, the region, the national scale, the scale of other nation-states, and the international arena). Second, the scales that exert the most influence on journalistic fields can change depending on whether the nation-state or the region is embroiled in conflict.
... A post annexation survey in February 2015 by the German market analysis company, GfK, indicated general satisfaction with the outcome of the events that resulted in Crimea's annexation. While our survey data showed that 84% approved completely of this move, the GfK survey showed 82% complete agreement with this annexation and another 11% mostly in agreement (GfK results are reported in Petrov 2016 andRapoza 2015). ...
... The only significant public question raised was by Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in October 2017 when she termed Russia's actions a violation of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 (UNIAN 2018). At the same time, the diversion of funds by the Russian state to fund the integration of Crimea into Russiamost especially through financing the Kerch Strait bridgehas brought regional tensions and budget difficulties to Russia (Zubarevich 2015;Petrov 2016). ...
The widespread international condemnation of the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014 is at odds with the strong local support for the transfer of territory in the peninsula. Though regarded as illegitimate by most governments as indicated in a UN General Assembly vote, the Russian government argued that the transfer was justified since it reflected the majority opinion in Crimea. The examination of attitudes in December 2014 through a representative survey in Crimea confirmed the support for territorial transfer and indicated that most residents believed that their well-being would improve as a result. Most lamented the end of the Soviet Union but strongly trusted President Putin and his policies as a way to improve the local economy. Nearly everyone had Russian citizenship less than a year after the annexation. There was little difference between the biggest demographic groupings, Russians and Ukrainians, in attitudes and beliefs. Exceptionally, the Tatar minority consistently demonstrated opposition to the annexation, distrust of Putin and supported a return to the circumstances that the peninsula had experienced after 1991. With the exception of this minority, the annexation continues to garner wide popular approval despite international opprobrium, sanctions against Russia and sustained geopolitical tensions in the Black Sea region. This is the Crimea conundrum.
... This was achieved by Russian unmarked military men who wore masks and went on to seize several significant key government buildings in Crimea including the parliament buildings and two airports (Finnis, 2022). Anatolii Mohyliov (Former Chairman of the Crimea Council of Ministers) was replaced by Sergey Aksyonov as per the announcement made by the Supreme Council of Crimea that disbanded the independent government of Crimea (Petrov, 2016). ...
The roles of borders in transnational trade could not be overemphasized. One of the challenges to effective international transactions
is border crime. Boarder crimes such as smuggling of contrabands, rice,
arms and ammunitions, illegal migration and illicit drugs. These activities
fuel insecurity like armed-robbery, terrorism, kidnapping, murder, suicide,
unemployment and reduced national production. And subsequently,
results in loss of lives, properties and national pride. On the basis of this,
the paper assesses trans-border crime control and regional trade as
strategies to boost national security in Nigeria. The study adopts a
qualitative research method which obtained data from secondary sources.
The secondary sources include the content analysis of edited books, peer
reviewed journals and online resources. It anchors on structuralfunctionalist theory by Talcott Parsons and routine activity theory by
Marcus Felson. The findings revealed that crimes such as smuggling of
illicit drugs, selected items, illegal migration across borders inhibit
economic growth which culminated into national security. The paper
122 African Migration:
Recent Trends, Key Influences, and Implications
recommends enhanced electronic security at borders, committed to
implementations of regional trade agreements and prosecution of the
suspects. This study will be useful to individuals, policy-holders,
governments at various levels, regional organizations and nongovernmental organisations and researchers in the field of Social Sciences.
... 16 Tactical regional cooperation continues among GUAM countries, see GUAM (2018). created, all of the national and municipal enterprises were "refurbished" under the Russian law and large infrastructural projects were initiated (Petrov, 2016). The most important among the latter was the Crimean bridge, designed to connect Crimea with Russia over the narrow pass of Kerch Strait. ...
This article provides comprehensive research on sub-regional cooperation between former Soviet Union countries in the Black Sea region. Established in 1997, the Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova (ODED-GUAM), united four countries in their desire to proceed with sub-regional cooperation and the ambitious goal of challenging the traditional power distribution in the region. In the first part of this article I discuss the rationale for a new sub-regional organisation and the stages of its development. From the very beginning, the ODED-GUAM prioritised democratic and economic development, where security was a secondary factor. With Russia regaining economic might and strengthening control over the region, the security challenges become a major factor of instability for all members of ODED-GUAM. Starting with Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria conflicts in early nineties, continuing with the Georgian War in 2008 and climaxing with Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the region is experiencing long lasting instability with a growing number of "frozen" and ongoing conflicts.
In March 2014 following the military intervention of the Russian troops into the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the latter announced its independence and, through the illegal referendum, declared its entrance into the Russian Federation. The period between 2014 and 2016 this article concentrates on is considered as transitional period insofar as the most important issues were to be solved. Among them, one can name the formation of the institutions and legal framework, new appointments and political elites. This article argues that the main objective of Kremlin during the mentioned period was rapid and unobstructed inclusion of Crimea into the Russian Federation after the military invasion and annexation. While Moscow aimed at accelerated creation of the institutions and legislative base in Crimea, it filled Crimea with the Russian elites removing all local professionals. At the same time, Moscow not only neglected the issues of the human rights and rights of minorities but tried to prevent the emergence of the opposition voices. Author employs analysis of the legislation related to the transition period as well as the media coverage of the issues.
Almost six years ago the Crimean Peninsula became part of Russia. The article examines television as part of the information field of Crimea and Sevastopol and compares its power during three periods – Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian. Our main attention is given to the current state of television and its transformations within the Russian media system. We argue that the changes that Crimean and Sevastopol TV has undergone since 2014 are mostly beneficial for several reasons: (1) with three multiplexes in place Crimea is becoming one of the most technologically developed regions in terms of TV. (2) Crimean TV today is represented by channels airing 24/7. (3) One hundred percent of content is fully produced in Crimea. We also offer perspective on some current issues the TV market is facing (audience measuring, self-censorship, lack of qualified professionals, licensing problems). We use expert interviews as the main research method and the frontier concept as our theoretical frame.
Recent decades have seen a conspicuous flowering of counterfactual or ‘virtual’ history, nurtured by a fecund mulch of post-modernist critiques of empiricism, the vulnerability of Marxist history (as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union), and the genre’s voguish allure to the general public. Never immune from such challenges, both exogenous and endogenous, the history of the Russian revolutions and civil wars has long felt their impact, and they have sprouted anew, if somewhat weakly, in some publications linked to the revolution’s centenary. This article examines the roots of these inherently thistly but straggling scions of the counterfactual thicket, as well as explicit dystopias and utopias found in earlier White émigré and Soviet dissident fiction (notably the works of P. N. Krasnov and V. P. Aksenov), before proceeding to test the ‘alternatives to Bolshevism’ suggested more implicitly in Western histories of the period. It finds that these proffered alternatives have been, for the most part, insubstantial but that counterfactual history is not necessarily devoid of utility.
This article explores self-censorship among journalists by drawing on Bourdieusian field theory and New Censorship Theory. The article analyses the experiences of local Crimean journalists in the period following Russia’s annexation of the peninsula, and during the rapid increase of Russian state control over local media. The analysis presented here draws on 70 biographical interviews conducted with local journalists who worked in Crimea for a period of at least 1 year between 2013 and 2017. In the first part of the article, I propose a Bourdieusian approach to self-censorship. In the second part of the article, I focus on illustrative examples of journalists who have risen to prominent positions in new post-2014 Crimean media, and detail three self-censorship practices: (1) governing ‘the other’ (a journalist engages in self-censorship only when it comes to ‘the ethnic other’: they refuse to practice self-censorship when working for Moscow-based Russian language media, but agree to self-censorship in local media targeting Crimean Tatars); (2) alerting the authorities (a journalist strikes deals with local politicians by not reporting on local infrastructural problems, instead directly asking the local government to fix them in return for favourable media coverage); and (3) self-censorship as patience (a journalist oversees positive reporting of local news and avoids negative topics as they wait patiently for Crimea’s growing pains to pass).
This article investigates the voting behaviour of Crimean Tatars before and after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The main question is: do they take part in the voting, thus de facto legitimizing the new status quo, or do they largely boycott elections, thus indirectly refusing to accept the annexation? The article found that Crimean Tatars were already not particularly active as voters before 2014. After the annexation, a lot of them boycotted the elections held in 2014 and 2016. But by 2018 Moscow managed to attract more than a third of voters in Tatar-dominated areas. As a result, their voter turnout at the 2018 Presidential election almost reached the level of 2012.
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