Borders in Post-Socialist Europe

Territory, Scale, Society

Tassilo Herrschel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317173106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'Borders' have attracted considerable attention in public and academic debates in light of the impact of globalisation and, in Europe, the end of the divisions of the Cold War era. Instead, being inside or outside of the EU has become a major paradigmatic divide between claimed 'spheres of influence' by 'Brussels' and 'Moscow' respectively. In the aftermath of the end of communism, established certainties no longer seemed to apply. And this included many of the borders within the former eastern Bloc, with some losing their relevance, while others re-assert themselves. As its particular contribution, this book adopts a symbiotic approach to the analysis of borders, drawing on a political-economy perspective, while also recognising the importance of the socio-cultural dimension as found in 'border studies'. This seeks to do greater justice to the complex, composite nature of borders as geo-political, state-legal and cultural-historic constructs in both theory and practice. In addition, the book's approach stretches across spatial scales to capture the multi-level nature of borders. The first part of the book presents the conceptual framework as it sets out to embrace this multi-faceted, multi-layered nature of borders. In the second part, case studies from north-central Europe, including the Baltic Sea Region, exemplify the complexity of borders in the context of post-socialist transformation and continuing EU-isation.

5 Russia and Shifting Borders within and around the BSR: Making and Bridging New Divisions

DOI: 10.4324/9781315569741-6

Part 1: Kaliningrad and Its Bordering Between Russia and the European Union

The Russian border is one of the most complex and symbolic within Eastern Europe, as it reflects the emergence of Russia as a post-Soviet independent state, yet also, as the dominant player within the former Soviet Union, being its successor. This dual process of building a new, Russian national identity, independent of a Soviet context, while also seeking continuity, especially in its external relationships and role in the international community, has affected its politics and interaction with the Eastern European states both within – also referred to as the near-abroad (Christiansen et al., 2000; Pikayev, 1996) – and outside the former Soviet Union. This process goes along with an underlying shift in Russia’s notion of its spatiality, especially vis-à-vis the European Union – still viewed as ‘the West’. Continuing objections from Moscow to a further expansion by the EU and, even more so, NATO, onto former Soviet territory, claimed by Russia as its ‘sphere of influence’, suggests a continuity of Cold War era antagonisms and strategic considerations. Yet this perception of the Russian–EU border as a ‘frontier’ varies in its local interpretations and manifestations, leading to a ‘fuzzy frontier’ (Archer and Etzold, 2008). This “stretches both the physical dimensions and conceptual cohesion of the European Union and Russia” (Vitucic, 2003, p. 1).

The two examples introduced in this chapter and the next, illustrate that complexity: (1) the particular case of the Kaliningrad Region as Russian exclave surrounded by and EU external border, and then (2) the border between Russia and the Baltic States (Chapter 6). Both examples of Russian borderness discussed underwent considerable changes as part of their transformation post-communism, changing from an internal, essentially administrative border between Soviet Republics within the Soviet Union, to an international status as the external border of the EU. These fundamentally changing political and state-institutional meanings were accompanied by equally changing roles as reflections, and manifestations, of cultural–political and national identities. Yet, despite this functional similarity, the two examples illustrate an inverse perspective: while in the case of the three Baltic States, especially Estonia, the emphasis has been on othering Russia by underlining the Baltic Republic’s Nordic/Baltic historic affinity, in the case of Kaliningrad it is about reaffirming Russianness vis-à-vis a perceived Europeanisation (or, rather, EU-isation) agenda affecting its borders. In Kaliningrad, the border issue is more defensive, i.e. it is about maintaining a relational connectivity and using the border as a point of reference to mark out separateness and belonging.

Thus, while in the case of Kaliningrad being Russian, and maintaining that connection in identity vis-à-vis the outside world, the opposite is the case for Estonia (and also, if less so, the other two Baltic states). For them, NOT being part of Russia has become the main dimension of their national identity building. Being not Russian is a major part of resurrecting and shaping national identities among the Baltic states after gaining independence from the former Soviet Union. There is still a sense of a continuous threat to their independence, not helped by occasional noises from Moscow in that direction (Pikayev, 1996). But EU membership has contributed to a heightened sense of security – and achieving this was a major driver of seeking to join the European Union – while also providing a pretext for reinforcing the border to Russia as a truly international and external ‘high’ border (Petrakos and Topaloglou, 2008).

Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation, as its legal and undisputed successor state, has had to find a new post-Iron Curtain relationship with Western Europe, and that means first and foremost the EU. While initially, under President Yeltsin, this was from a position of economic and political weakness, the change in presidency in 2000 to Vladimir Putin meant a resurrection of Russia’s international ambitions and concern with being given due credit (and respect) as a former superpower and still potent political player (Hughes, 2007). The growing dependency of much of Europe on Russian energy resources has helped boost its political hand in asserting its interests vis-à-vis the EU and especially the former Soviet Republics in its Western ‘near abroad’ (Stern, 2005). The repeated use of oil and gas deliveries to Ukraine at the height of winter (Stern, 2006), for instance, in the pursuit of political concessions, illustrates the growth in Russian ambitions and bargaining power. Accordingly, repeated ‘noises’ from Russian policy makers about a Russian ‘sphere of interest’ (Page, 1994) in its near abroad along its western border suggest that existing and, especially, planned further EU enlargement into Eastern Europe will create a political backlash and outright hostility. The dispute in Georgia demonstrates this, as does the now seemingly annual ritual about asserting Ukraine’s dependence on Russian gas supplies (Stern, 2006). Certainly, the eastern border of the EU has created a new frontier mentality on the Russian side, a defensive line along its claimed space of political interests. This has affected Russia’s attitude towards, and engagement in, collaborative projects with Central and Eastern European countries as Candidate or member states of the EU, respectively.

This underlying continuation of an East–West thinking has become clearly evident in the current negotiations between NATO and Russia about collaboration in engagement in Afghanistan, agreed at the NATO Lisbon Summit in November 2010 (NATO website: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm, accessed 22 Dec 2010). In return, Russia seeks confirmation of an end to NATO’s (and the EU’s) pursuit of expansion into the countries of its near abroad, that is the area just east of the current EU eastern border (Sengupta, 2010). Thus, while the former Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ellemann-Jensen, could suggest in 2002 (von Flotow, 2002) that Russia is interested in further integration with the Baltic Sea states and closer economic and political interaction with the EU, such a claim looks much less convincing today after the Putin-led (as President and now Prime Minister) new international assertiveness of Russia and claim of a special (more elevated) status (Diez et al., 2006). On that basis, it is much less clear whether Russia is still willing to subscribe to the vision of a common European (Economic) Space that includes Russia. Recent acquisitions of sizeable stakes in Western European companies, especially in the energy sector, further enhance Russia’s growing role as the main energy supplier of the EU, underpinning an increasingly more powerful and assertive state. So, it is not surprising to find that there is little evidence that the European Union is willing to negotiate overly favourable cross-border arrangements with states which are unlikely to become EU members within the foreseeable future (Cichocki, 2001)

5.1 The Border around Kaliningrad Region: From ‘Defence Line’ to ‘Networked Virtual Regionalism’?

The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, with its insular position within EU territory, provides an interesting example of the interaction between ‘conventional’ notions of territoriality and borderness, and emerging signs of the ‘new’, understanding of ‘virtual’, network-based regionalism which can reach across spatial scales. Despite its relatively small size of fewer than one million inhabitants, the Kaliningrad oblast has attracted somewhat disproportionate attention in international relations between Russia and the European Union, because it “has found itself in the very centre of two processes which are of paramount importance for Europe: EU and NATO enlargement” (Cichocki et al., 2001). Geographically and historic–functionally, it is part of the Baltic Sea Region, yet it is also an ‘oddity’ at the international level in that it is a Russian enclave within the European Union’s territory. As such, regional agendas and national (Russian) and international politics and policies are closely interwoven, at times all but identical. Traditional EU policies of integration through lowering borders face particular challenges here as the international dimension has by far been the dominant scale of political argumentation between the Russian Federation and the EU. This has been part of Russia’s concern about encroachment by the EU and, implicitly, the ‘West’ (especially NATO) onto its near abroad (Laitin, 1998). The 2004 eastward enlargement of the EU, bringing the EU border closer to its own perceived ‘sphere of influence’ in the ‘near abroad’ (Laitin, 1998) changed Russia’s perception of the EU as a neighbour and thus its response to trans-border initiatives (Sergounin, 2006). The perceived ‘encroachment’ into Russia’s political space was accompanied by anxiousness about the role of the Central European countries in shaping the overall EU agenda, as their attitude towards Russia, shaped by past occupation, is expected to be more critical, even hostile. Thus, for instance, Moscow blames the Central European EU member states for the lack of progress in the discussions between the EU and Russia about economic matters, trade, visa regimes, transport, and, inevitably, Kaliningrad. Then, there is the adoption of the ENP by the EU in May 2004, reflecting a marked shift in its policy towards Russia. “The ENP brings about a lot of changes in the EU’s relations with its new neighbours, including Russia” (Sergounin, 2006, p. 123). Among Russia’s political elite, there seems to be a well established view that equates “the concept of ‘soft security’ with domestic security, and ‘soft power’ with economic strength” (Joenniemi and Makarychev, 2004, p. 14), while viewing the term ‘enlargement’ as an inherently expansionist strategy. The legacy of Cold War era ideology is clearly evident in this.

Kaliningrad oblast became de facto part of the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War together with the three Baltic States, which were incorporated into the Soviet Union as Soviet Socialist Republics under the provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 (Vizulis, 1990). This established wider access to the Baltic Sea than was offered by St Petersburg (then Leningrad). Given their crucial importance for the Soviet Union’s strategic geo-political and economic interests, all these areas underwent considerable Russification (Bychkov Green, 1997), with the Soviet naval ports under complete ethnic Russian control, as they were trusted more than the incorporated Baltic nations. The legacies of this are still-sizeable Russian minorities in the Baltic states, while in Kaliningrad the population is almost exclusively Russian. The previous German population was expelled in 1945 after Germany surrendered to the Allies. Most of the historic physical legacy was destroyed beyond the damage caused by the war in order to eradicate any reference to pre-Soviet days. The re-built city thus deliberately does away with references to historic legacies in an attempt to break with the past, indeed, eradicate the past from public memory (Browning and Joenniemi, 2003). This destruction of its visible Baltic–Hanseatic heritage, together with a population with no local roots and memories, produced a complete historic debasing of the city and its region. This makes for the construction of a new Baltic reference and sense of belonging, based more on pure geographic location than historic precedence and narratives about the past. The main point of reference – economically, politically and culturally – is Moscow. The ‘other’ on the outside is alien and foreign.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the break-away of the Baltic states as independent entities, Kaliningrad became an isolated Russian exclave, surrounded by now (since 2004) ‘high’ EU external borders. But also before then, Poland and the newly independent Lithuanian state had installed tight border security to guard against Russia and emphasise the newly won separateness from Russian influence. Kaliningrad’s isolated geo-political position and close interconnection with mainland Russia is expressed in its continued, although now much less militarily shaped, importance as a Russian port on the Baltic Sea. The underlying rationale is no longer that of a primarily confrontational position vis-à-vis NATO as embodiment of ‘the West’ and political–ideological adversary. This has resulted in a shift away from being one of the most highly militarised areas in Europe to an attempt at installing something akin to Hong Kong with emphasis on international free trade, supported by much more liberal economic, customs and border/visa regimes than in the rest of the Russian Federation. Yet all these development have been, and continue to be, directed from Moscow. There is little scope for locally shaped policies, especially those aimed at collaboration and integration with the neighbouring EU countries. As with many centralised states, there is a concern in the capital Moscow that its periphery might become more independent, weakening its ties to the centre in exchange for stronger links across the border with ‘foreign’ places.

The demise of the USSR in 1991 changed many of its internal borders between individual Socialist Republics, turning them from domestic ‘regional’ boundaries into international borders. Various nationalities sought to re-establish their new-found autonomy over their territories, such as Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia, albeit with varying success and adopted strategies. These now form the ‘near abroad’ (Pikayev, 1996) from a Russian perspective, sitting within Moscow’s claimed ‘sphere of influence’ and also just beyond the eastern border of the European Union after its eastward expansion in 2004.

The particular situation of Kaliningrad has resulted in a superimposition of national/international and local and/or regional agendas and perspectives. This went along with a corresponding overlap of the differing notions of the scale in spatiality of (new) regionalism between an international and sub-national regional scale – in response to the dynamics in economic geography (Lamande et al., 2004). Cox (1998) highlights this complexity and fluidity between territorial scales and the varying nature of boundedness of space. He distinguishes between conventional fixed territory-based areas and those spaces loosely circumscribed (and thus not clearly bounded) by networks and linkages without necessary territorial contiguity. Policies, he concludes, need not necessarily draw on fixed territories as spatial containers, but can just as well emerge from virtual spaces (Herrschel, 2007) as rationale and driver. The result is that in the Kaliningrad oblast sub-national and international dimensions are often difficult to distinguish, as Russia’s national perspectives on European politics are directly projected onto the Kaliningrad region. Yet there, rather than internationalising this space, the opposite has been the case. The result has been a protective strengthening of its borders out of a sense of uncertainty and perceived external threat to Russia’s control of the exclave. Consequently, the Kaliningrad region has taken a more nationally introspective view, tying its interests closely to those of Russia. All external connections go only via Moscow, and this reflects the grip Moscow continues to hold over this territory. And the degree to which regional interests get a hearing at the centre very much depends on personal networks and connections between a region’s governor and the Kremlin. For instance, in the 2000 gubernatorial elections, connections to the then Russian President, Vladimir Putin, handed one candidate the office of governor (Holtom, 2002).

This importance of personal networks between the regional administration and the Russian government, however, opens the door to corruption, especially in the face of the oblast’s limited economic potential and below average Russian per capita income (Cichocki et al., 2001, p. 54) and restricted access to political and economic actors across the border (Holtom, 2002; Cichocki et al., 2001). “It should be emphasised, however, that the practice of exercising power over the Kaliningrad Oblast is no different to what is happening in Russia in general. It is peculiar to the enclave that it is a stronghold of the army, which can influence certain decisions taken by the regional administration” (Cichocki et al., 2001, p. 54). The army, of course, also provides an important ideological and nationalistic link between the Kaliningrad region and Russia proper. Any signs of weakening that connection, such as in exchange with improved ties to the adjoining countries now within the EU, will be closely watched. This tightly bordered situation is quite different from the historic role of the city and its region as an integral part of the Baltic social, cultural and economic landscape, with multiple connections in all directions, serving as a transport and communication hub within the wider region and reaching internationally across the Baltic Sea and beyond.

Under the Soviet Union, Kaliningrad was one of the Soviet regions, bordering the Baltic Socialist Soviet Republics Latvia and Lithuania to the north and east, and communist Poland, in the south and west. The physical separateness of the region from Russia proper was therefore of little practical relevance. Since the end of the Soviet Union, however, hard, defensive and exclusionary borders have been created around the Kaliningrad oblast, as these turned from internal administrative to external state borders, although access to the naval base of Kaliningrad city was tightly controlled during Soviet times. The internationalisation and securitisation of the borders along the Baltic Sea stretching across the territory of the former Soviet Union, mirror legacies, animosities and resentments. The latter affect in particular administrative structures and people, and governmental arrangements, policies and strategies both within and outside the oblast. Yet economic realities, such as peripherality in a European context and functional interdependencies at the Baltic regional level, required finding a workable balance between economically required cross-border communication and politically motivated border separateness. This continues to remain a major political challenge.

5.1a Defensive Bordering: Kaliningrad Region as a Mental and Political ‘Fortress’

The end of the Soviet Union created a particular ‘oddity’ in the Baltic area, the Kaliningrad Region, which, since 2004, had become a Russian exclave within the European Union’s territory. The result is that ‘external EU border’ has less to do with geography – the border is not on the outside of EU territory – than international state law and international relations. Kaliningrad oblast, therefore, projects topics and challenges of the international dimension onto a territory of a regional scale and legal standing. It is part of the Russian state, ruled from Moscow – but it is not a contiguous part of the Russian state space. Investigating and seeking to understand the particularities of the Kaliningrad region, its territoriality and thus borderness, require a look at both explanations and concepts of regionality, that is the simultaneity of its international and sub-national perspective, such as attributed to ‘new regionalism’ (see Chapter 1). The inherent scalar fuzziness of that reference is underlined by the underlying dynamics over the last 20 years in the southern part of the Baltic Sea Region in general, and those of the Kaliningrad region in particular. The result has been a temporalisation of the exclave’s territorial meaning and relevance in general, and this has defined and re-defined the role and nature of its borders. It is this wider, international relevance of the Kaliningrad oblast’s nature, and the position of the bounded exclave, punching much above its political–economic weight, which together have attracted Moscow’s and Brussels’ attention (Holtom, 2002). Yet outside its role as a localised indicator of Russian–EU relationship, Kaliningrad has little in terms of political or economic meaning and presence on the European political–economic mental map. Its sheer geographic location suggests peripherality and marginality, and the fact that it was inaccessible for nearly 50 years until the early 1990s, and since then has had a clearly awkward relationship between its geo-political nature and geographic location, has further contributed to its having falling off the radar screen of European business and politics.

The particular position of the Kaliningrad oblast has drawn much attention to the nature of its border, and the changing perceptions and practicalities of its ‘traversability’. Much of this revolves around the border regime, rather than the actual delimitation of the ‘border line’, as it is through this that political relationships and aspirations are projected. The so-called Kaliningrad Puzzle (Joenniemi et al., 2000) refers to the unclear range and role of, and relationship between, political and economic actors in the triangular relationship between Kaliningrad, Moscow and Brussels, where shifting political interests and concerns at national and international level frame the regional nature of the Kaliningrad oblast. Ultimately, it is down to the region’s political actors to identify avenues of political lobbying – after the definition of strategic goals – and networking, thus taking a more creative, proactive approach, instead of viewing themselves as merely passive recipients and executors of Moscow-defined policies, political guarantees and economic support. The designation of Kaliningrad as a Special Economic Zone (SAZ) or the establishment of the Kaliningrad Development Agency are such Moscow-dependent policies, requiring national legislation, although their effectiveness is not always clear (Cichocky et al., 2001), even though there have been recent successes, such as the settin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Why Borders in Eastern Europe?
• Eastern Europe, ‘Transition’, and the Re-Making of Space, Spatiality and Borderness
• Multi-Level Bordering: Borders, Scale and the ‘New Regionalism’
• Virtual Territoriality and Multi-level Bordering in the ‘Virtual’ Baltic Sea Region
• Russia and Shifting Borders within and around the BSR: Making and Bridging New Divisions (Part 1)
• Russia and Shifting Borders within and around the BSR: Making and Bridging New Divisions (Part 2)
• Changing Borderness Towards a ‘Borderless’ Europe: Euroregions and the EU-isation of Central European Borders
• Conclusions – Towards Composite Multi-level Borderness in Europe
• Bibliography
• Index