Central and Eastern Europe in the face of a new Russian kidnapping
By Aliaksei Kazharski and Andrey Makarychev
In the wake of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine it became clear that Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was facing a danger of a new Russian kidnapping. This new dramatic situation has pushed many countries towards repositioning themselves in terms of their identity and geopolitical visions.
Kidnapping is an old one theme in the region. The Czech novelist and intellectual Milan Kundera once famously described the countries of the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc as being “kidnapped” behind the Iron Curtain against their own will. Following the collapse of Communist dictatorships some of these countries (re)joined the West in the European Union and NATO, others, including many post-Soviet states, remained in the so-called limes, a liminal or gray zone with unclear identities and geopolitical preferences. In the meantime, Russian imperialism was resurging step by step: the use of military force against neighbors was combined with political intimidation, economic pressure, and various subversive clandestine operations that extended also to the EU and NATO countries.
Moscow’s 2022 aggression has had a profound effect on the region’s (geo)political landscapes. It restructured the existing liminality but did not abolish it altogether. Ukraine is now fighting staunchly to escape the European geopolitical gray zone and cease to be the object of Russia’s policy of “red lines.” However, for years if not decades to come, it will probably have to cope with practical effects of non-membership in the EU and NATO. Institutionally, Kyiv does its best to compensate for its liminality through participation in such regional platforms as the Danube Strategy and the Three Seas Initiative, simultaneously concluding bilateral security agreements with individual allied countries.
Russia’s neoimperialist activities are not limited by the current war, its subversive operations and “political warfare” stretch far beyond. Moscow helped to brutally crush the 2020 democratic protests in Belarus and then used the assistance of Lukashenka’s dictatorial regime to attack Ukraine. There are Russia-friendly governments in Hungary and, after 2023, also in Slovakia, who are visibly trying to play both sides. The liminality has thus been shifting geographically with parts of it now located also inside the EU. In post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Moldova, with its constitutional neutrality, is facing a liminal status in the security domain.
The South Caucasus produces its own experiences of liminality. Georgia is maneuvering between reproducing Russian practices of repressing domestic opposition, on the one hand, and expressing its enthusiastic support for EU integration, on the other. Armenia is trying to find a balance between maintaining beneficial relations with Russia and turning to the West for economic assistance and security protection.
There are thus many simultaneous developments in the region that have to do with (geo)politics and identity. The special issue published in Alternatives: Global, Local, Political and the forthcoming follow-up book project involves a team of experts from the region who zoom in on individual countries, trying to understand how the outbreak of the full-scale war has affected their self-positioning. There are multiple interesting trends to be observed here. In several cases, CEE nations visibly projected their collective historical memories onto the present war, seeing Ukrainians as repeating their own previous freedom fight against Russian imperialism. However, some societies also found themselves divided alongside geopolitical lines, which resulted in “neutralist” or pseudo-pacificist forces gaining momentum in domestic politics. This corresponds to the above idea of “a new liminality” growing its way into the Western-led regional institutions. Finally, the studies demonstrates that, in some cases, CEE countries seemed to be still caught between elements of European/Western identities and their post-Soviet/post-Communist past, which suggests that their transition remains an ongoing process.
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