Translated material
Answer to the course of history
A sober historical view nullifies any patriotic or ideological reasons based on which some countries support the Kosovars, while others are indignant. Every state once did not exist and someday will not exist. This is what we used to call “the course of history.” No written norms of international law, no fixation on paper of the inviolability of borders can cancel the historically complex relations of some peoples with others, the emergence of new ones and the collapse of existing large and small states. These are the same “physiological”, irrevocable, inevitable processes for humanity, just like eating food for a person.
This is where a humanitarian perspective should come to our aid. The problem is not whether the European Union and the United States should recognize the independence of Kosovo, just as it is not whether Russia should recognize or not recognize the independence of Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia in “retaliation to the West.” The problem is not whether Kosovo will become an impetus for the growth of separatism in the world. The problem is that Serbs should not be killed in Kosovo for being Serbs, that the Orthodox shrines located there should not be destroyed (some have already been destroyed without any Kosovo declaration of independence). In the end, the history of Kosovo only completes the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia, a largely artificial country that united, to put it mildly, peoples who were not very friendly with each other. And blood began to flow there precisely because of attempts to suppress separatism by force.
An appeal to international law in such cases is pointless. Not even because the principle of territorial integrity enshrined in these norms constantly comes into irreconcilable contradiction with the right of nations to self-determination. You just need to understand that any state is always less valuable than the people inhabiting it.
The strong separatist tendencies that exist in relatively rich countries - Canada, Spain, Belgium - are partly offset by the high standard of living of the population. But even there it can be very difficult to keep the situation within a civilized framework: Quebec from time to time plans to separate from Canada peacefully, in Belgium the Walloons and Flemings have not been able to form a government for six months, and Basque terrorists still remain the main threat to the security of Spain. Moreover, Baskonia is one of the most developed regions of Spain, and Quebec is not a “poor” in comparison with English-speaking Canada. Whereas Kosovo looks economically very poor even against the backdrop of Serbia, which is by no means prosperous, although, perhaps, richer than Albania, which the region could theoretically join. Meanwhile, the desire for separation is especially strong where historically complex interethnic relations are superimposed on the not very successful economic situation in the metropolis. It is easier to “dump” a poor person than a rich person.
The most reasonable reaction of the world community to the “Kosovo precedent” is the creation of economic and military-political mechanisms to prevent violence in the center of Europe. The lives of people caught in this latest whirlpool of history are the main goal of all politics around Kosovo. Let us repeat, minimizing violence does not directly depend on the recognition or non-recognition of the independence of this Serbian enclave. International isolation or a solidary refusal to recognize the independence of self-proclaimed states does not in itself make such enclaves more accommodating to the metropolitan countries or more civilized. Economic assistance, police control, strict requirements from the European Union (on which Kosovo relies as its main potential ally and defender) for the Kosovo authorities to be guided by basic democratic principles in domestic politics - this is a set of mechanisms that is designed to protect Europe from the appearance of " Balkan Chechnya".
It is clear that the leadership of Serbia, for political reasons, cannot come to terms with the loss of Kosovo, just as the leadership of Georgia cannot come to terms with the loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, just as the leadership of Russia cannot come to terms with the loss of its Caucasian republics. But in history, sometimes you have to put up with the inevitable if there are no ways to preserve territorial integrity. Losing territory is less of a shame for politicians than unleashing a bloodbath and destroying civilians.
The choice between the state and the individual, and this has often been, is, and will be faced by politicians in history, is a very difficult choice. Usually politicians choose the state, dooming people to death. If they learn to choose a person, only then there is a chance that geographical conventions (at least the very fact of the inevitable death of each of us makes any of our national, political or social affiliation very conditional) will not interfere with the implementation of the main task of politics: ensuring the longest and safest life possible. the lives of every living person.
The illusion of mononational statehood as a guarantor of the protection of rights and increase in the power of a particular nation, alas, is very tenacious. But someone must look to a broader historical horizon and build policies on more humanistic foundations.
Russia itself has literally just - 17 years is a mere moment in history - experienced the collapse of the state of which it was the core. Perhaps if the Soviet government had not tightened the screws and eaten up petrodollars, but had managed to build a democratic country with a free market economy, this collapse would have been avoided. But given the political and economic model that the authorities had been testing on living people for decades, the USSR was doomed. And no matter how much anyone mourns the lost “greatness,” the country, whose government innocently exterminated millions of citizens and did not create conditions for a decent life for the vast majority of the population, absolutely objectively could not maintain an artificial patchwork empire that united too different peoples.
Now we can sprinkle ashes on our heads, or we can use the new status of Russia, which has ceased to be a “prison of nations,” to create normal life in this still vast territory. With Kosovo, despite the difference in “dimensions” and initial historical data, the situation is exactly the same.