PUTIN S NEW RUSSIA AND THE GHOSTS □ F THE PAST
THE LONG HANGOVER
THE LONG HANGOVER
—
PUTIN'S NEW RUSSIA AND THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST
SHAUN WALKER
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Shaun Walker 2018
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CONTENTS
List of Maps vii
Map of Soviet Union viii Map of Russia ix Map of Ukraine x
Prologue I
PART I CURATING THE PAST
A first-tier nation 7
The sacred war 21
Chechnya: the deal 43
Kolyma: the end of the earth 65
PART 2 CURATING THE PRESENT
The Olympic dream 103
Ukraine is not dead yet ill
The Crimea gambit 133
The Crimean Tatars 153
Russian Crimea 167
PART 3 THE PAST BECOMES THE PRESENT
Donbass: the spiral 185
War 203
PART 4 THE PAST IN THE FUTURE
After the war 235
Epilogue 247
Authors Note 255 Acknowledgements 257 Notes 259 Bibliography 267 Index 272
LIST OF MAPS
Map of the Soviet Union viii
Map of Russia ix
Map of Ukraine x
Barents Sea
Baltic Sea
' OCEAN
Sea of Okhotsk
M0LDOVfAN SSR
Moscow
1NIANSSR
RUSSIAN SFSR
^ORGIAN SSR
KAZAKH SSR
IRKMEN SSI
SSR - Soviet Socialist Republic
SFSR - Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
0 300 V 600 < 900 Kilometers
The Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian SSRs were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 and not recognised internationally as part of the country.
Map of the Soviet Union
Barents Sea
laltic Sea
ARCTIC OCEAN
Magadan
LITHl
1ELARUS
Sea of Okhotsk
Moscow
Irkutsk
Vladivostok
KAZAKHSTAN
UKRAINE
[OLDOyAf
GEORGIA ^RMENIA-
AZERBAIJAN
UZBEKISTAN
TURKMENISTAN
0 300 V 600 < 900 Kilometers
Map of Russia
Map of Ukraine
PROLOGUE
October 2014, Torez, rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine
There had been an autumn chill in the air for a few days, and even inside the seized secret police headquarters, it was cold. The Romanian did not seem to notice the temperature, apparently comfortable in his light military jacket and a single, fingerless leather glove. But he clocked me shivering, and declared it unacceptable that the town's heating system had not yet come on. He had been to the power plant the previous day, he said, and laid down an ultimatum. They had a week to get things sorted or he would have the management shot for sabotage.
This might have been taken for bravado, were it not for the fact that the Romanian had organized two public executions in the preceding weeks. Most recently, a young man in his twenties had been caught looting by some of the Romanians men, and sentenced to the ultimate punishment. 'He thought it was a joke until the last minute,' the Romanian said, puffing his way through the latest in a steady stream of cigarettes held in his ungloved hand.
The young man was executed by a bullet to the back of the head, outside the shop from which he had stolen. A crowd of locals gathered on the street to watch.
Public executions seemed a little out of place in twenty-first-century Europe, I ventured. The Romanian shrugged. 'Nobody blames a surgeon for the fact they remove tumours from the body with a scalpel. That is what we are doing here, with this society.'
Despite the name, he was very much Russian; the Romanian was merely his pozyvnoi, a пот de guerre chosen because one branch of his family had roots in Romania. All the fighters I met during the war in eastern Ukraine had a pozyvnoi. There was the Amp (a former electrician), the Ramone (they were his favourite band), and the Monk (he'd never cheated on his wife).
With their silly names, they often seemed like boys playing at war, but the Romanian was one of the serious ones. He radiated intensity, and had a clipped, military brusqueness when he spoke that bordered on disdain. Nevertheless, it was clear he enjoyed having an audience. He had griped repeatedly when our interview was set up that he did not have time to waste chattering with journalists. But when I arrived, he proceeded to talk about his fiefdom for three hours with little interruption, spraying literary and biblical references, ranging from the novels of Stendhal to obscure conspiracy websites about the Bilderberg Group. Tall and lean, with closely cropped greying hair and a neat, clipped moustache, he sat at the head of a long table, drinking over-brewed tea and ashing his cigarettes into a rusting old tuna tin. The walls were bare save for peeling light-blue paint.
The building had previously been the headquarters of the SBU, the Ukrainian security services, in the grimy mining town of Torez. Now, it was a heavily fortified base, controlled by the Russia-backed militias of the Donetsk People's Republic, a lawless quasi-state that had come into existence a few months previously.
A retired Russian military officer, the Romanian now held the official title of Head of Counterintelligence for the Ministry of State Security of the Donetsk People's Republic. In practice, this gave him license to act as a kind of vigilante ombudsman. A blonde woman, with gold hoop earrings, an elaborate manicure, and a combat jacket lined with faux fur, periodically entered the room to hand him sheets of paper, appeals from locals about looted property, or other grievances linked to rebel forces behaving badly.