Five years ago, on March 14, 2010, The Ukrainian Weekly featured Paul Goble‘s blog entry from his “Windows on Eurasia,” that examined the February 23, 2010, interview with Valery Tishkov, an influential Moscow specialist on ethnicity and politics. Every government must seek to defend its country’s territorial integrity because, in the wake of what he called “the destruction” of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the international community is not bound to do so, Mr. Tishkov said.
His comments were made following Moscow’s recognition of the Moscow puppet “republics” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russian commentators had also been discussing the further partition of Georgia and the possible division of Ukraine, or the absorption of some or all of that country by the Russian Federation.
Mr. Tishkov’s comments, Mr. Goble noted, reflected and will have an impact on discussions in the Russian policy community. Mr. Tishkov often expressed his belief that the division of states only creates new problems.
Speaking with Lyubov Ulyanova of Russky Zhournal, Mr. Tishkov said, “…The unity of states in the sense of assertion of territorial integrity and the solid loyalty of the population are guaranteed above all by the states themselves” rather than support from outside forces, however often it is declared.
The director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology added, “no external imperatives for the preservation of the [territorial] integrity of states exist, especially after the destruction of the Helsinki Final Act, which called for the inviolability of the existing borders in Europe… at the time the USSR came apart, no one opposed it – instead almost every player on the international arena did everything to promote that outcome, and the USSR did not have any external argument in defense of its own integrity.” The “external influence in the splitting up, disintegration or seizure of state formations or parts of their territories is not recognized by international law, if again there do not exist certain internal agreements on the division and external divisions on interference at the highest level,” such as decision by the United Nations.
All this, Mr. Tishkov argued, permits only “one conclusion: all states, even those who have a crisis of governance – the collapse of their economies, internal wars and chaos in civic life, the absence of central administration [and so on] must themselves guarantee their sovereignty on their own it they do not have allies who are obligated by treaty to help.”
Mr. Tishkov continued: “If another state is not interested by treaty conditions or other reflections such as the security of its own border areas, historical-cultural ties of the population, economic interests, etc., in the preservation of this or that state formation, it is correct for that state to do nothing for guaranteeing” the territorial integrity of the other.
Ukraine, Mr. Tishkov said, was “in fact a two-community (Ukrainian-Russian) state with several influential minorities, very much like Canada.” And the integrity of the state can be ensured only by official bilingualism” and by the proclamation that “the nation in Ukraine includes not only ethnic Ukrainians.”
“If Ukrainian ethnic nationalism remains at the foundation of statehood,” Mr. Tishkov said, “then this country can split apart without any external interference or become a federative formation on the basis of the Canadian formula of ‘multiculturalism on a bilingual basis.’ ”
Asked by the interviewer whether the international community was obliged to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Mr. Tishkov replied, “ ‘the international community’ owes nothing to Ukraine, except those of its members who have treaties with it in which such obligations are written.”
Source: “Moscow expert says international community not bound to support states’ territorial integrity,” by Paul Goble, The Ukrainian Weekly, March 14, 2010.