Russia, the West and Eastern Europe: Lenin’s long shadow by Ian Bond
This year, it will be a century since Lenin led the Bolsheviks to power in Russia; and 2016 marked a quarter of a century since the collapse of the Soviet Union that he created. The post-Soviet states have developed in different ways, but they are all dogged by problems born of their history. Russia still feels the phantom limb of its lost empire. And 25 years on, the West has no clear strategy for dealing even with the six former Soviet states that lie in Europe (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). In the case of NATO, all six (and Russia) are members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme, designed to build bilateral ties between NATO and non-members. Georgia and Ukraine want to go further, and to join the alliance. At the Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO leaders agreed that “these countries will become members of NATO”. But after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, the prospect of membership in the foreseeable future vanished. The European Union has dodged the issue of possible EU membership for the six since the 1990s. When the EU launched its Eastern Partnership in 2008, it set out ambitious goals for association agreements with its partners, but without saying whether they were eligible to apply for membership. After the Euromaidan uprising and Russia’s seizure of Crimea, EU foreign ministers got as far as saying that the EU-Ukraine association agreement “did not
constitute the final goal” in co-operation, without suggesting what might come next. Russia has a clearer vision for the region than the West does. It has never treated the six states as fully sovereign, especially in foreign and security policy. Initially, Russia seemed concerned only that its neighbours might integrate with NATO. But after Vladimir Putin became president for the third time, in 2012, he stepped up efforts to keep former Soviet states inside what his predecessor as president, Dmitriy Medvedev, described in 2008 as a “region of privileged interests”. The competition for influence between Russia and the West culminated in the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. The six countries now find themselves in a contested space, between a wary EU and NATO that would like to see them prosperous and stable but will not embrace them fully as members; and an assertive Russia willing to keep