The City of Glory: Sevastopol in Russian Historical Mythology

Abstract

The demise of world empires and the loss of colonies by the west European states is often viewed by students of nationalism 'as a central feature of the post-war Western European experience'. 1 The end of the Cold War resulted in the disintegration of the multinational Russian/Soviet empire and two 'pan-Slavic' states, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. In the case of Russia, the loss of empire was accompanied not only by loss of access to raw materials and markets and great damage to its prestige, as had been the case with the west European colonial powers, but also by military conflicts both beyond and within the Russian Federation.At the core of the differences between Russia and the west in dealing with the loss of empire lies the specific character of Russian imperialism, whose pecularities have been strongly manifested over the last two centuries. John Dunlop, who has written extensively on the 'loss' and 'fall' of the Soviet empire, 2 has also questioned the usage of the term 'empire' in regard to the tsarist state and the USSR. He writes that 'imprecise use of terminology serves to skew and to distort the position of Russians under both the Tsars and the Soviets'. 3 Richard Pipes, for his part, believes that the Russian empire acquired special characteristics owing to the fact that in Russia 'the rise of the national state and the empire occurred concurrently, and not, as in the case of the Western powers, in sequence'. 4 A number of specific characteristics distinguish Russian imperialism from the classical imperialisms of countries like Britain and France. These characteristics include the absence of Russian colonies overseas, active incorporation of the élites of the conquered borderlands into the Russian imperial élite, prevalence of empire-building tendencies over nation-building ones, employment of a federal façade for the highly centralized state of the Soviet period, etc. 5 Journal of Contemporary History

Synthetic personalization and the legitimization of the Crimean annexation: A discourse analysis of Vladimir Putin’s March 2014 presidential address

“…Putin rounds the military aspect by claiming that Each of these places is sacred to us, they are symbols of Russian military glory and unmatched valor (line 8). The scholarship has noticed the use of military history in order to legitimize the annexation, in particular when framing 'Sevastopol as a symbol of Russian national glory' (Plokhy, 2000).…”

Borders moving across people: Narratives of belonging among Crimean youth after 2014

“…In 1945, it was transformed into the Crimean ‘oblast’ (region) under the RSFSR, then was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. When Ukraine gained independence with the breakup of the USSR in 1991, Crimea became an ‘autonomous republic’ within Ukraine that same year (Plokhy, 2000; Sasse, 2007), which was recognized by Russia. More recently, following an occupation by Russian troops and a referendum (which has not been recognized by most of the international community or Ukraine), Crimea was de facto administratively integrated into Russia in 2014.…”

Power ideas and conflict: ideology, linkage and leverage in Crimea and Chechnya

“…The deportation of the Crimean Tatars under Stalin in 1944 remains outside the mainstream Russian imagination of Crimea, and the transfer of Crimea to the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian SSR under Khrushchev in 1954 is not accepted as a legal basis for Crimea's post-Soviet belonging to independent Ukraine (for more details on the transfer of 1954, based on archival sources, see Sasse 2007, Chapter 5; on the Crimean Tatars see Williams 2001;Uehling 2004). Crimea as a setting for repeated large-scale national defeat has been reappropriated into a Russian narrative about "national glory" and resistance symbolised by the two sieges of the city and military base of Sevastopol during the Crimean War and the Second World War (Plokhy 2000;Qualls 2009; Brown forthcoming 2015).…”