>From RIA Novosti

Izvestia

August 6, 1998

SHOULD RUSSIA PROTECT SERBS?

We Have Done More Than Received with Regard to Balkan Peoples

By Maxim YUSIN

Now that the Kosovo crisis is at its height Russian politicians and the public are confronted by an extremely urgent question whether Moscow should protect Serbs.

To follow the logic of the State Duma deputies who almost unanimously approve of the resolutions on the unconditional support for our "Orthodox brothers", the answer is only too obvious: Russia should, even must, protect the interests of the Serbs. The same firm opinion permeates the majority of comments on this subject in the Yugoslav press.

For Serb journalists and analysts it is an axiom that Russia should help their country. So they ask with indignation why Moscow is not in a hurry to do so and why it does not announce its readiness to take up arms and side with its ally in response to the West's threats. A Yugoslav weekly's commentator reproachfully reminds "Russian friends" that their descendants in their time entered the First World War for the sake of the Serbs.

So, what has happened? Have Russians really changed so much that, unlike their forefathers, they have forgotten their sacred duty of an ally?

But let us not hurry with self-torture. If Serb journalists like historic analogue, we can remind them of some things that happened in the past.

The attitude of Serbia to Russia was not always characterised by the degree of selfless loyalty which is expected from us today. After in 1878 Russia won independence for Serbs, that Balkan country did not stay very long in the sphere of St. Petersburg's influence.

The members of the Obrenovic dynasty who ruled in Serbia for almost a quarter of a century oriented themselves to Austria-Hungary, one of the main adversaries of the Russian Empire. The change of priorities happened shortly before the First World War which Russia entered, as a matter of fact, not only to defend Serbs but for many other reasons which were no less serious.

When some people talk of the "traditional friendship" between Russia and Serbia, one involuntarily wants to ask: When was this tradition born? The two countries had not been allies of long standing when the First World War broke out. After the October 1917 revolution in Russia they were completely isolated from each other. And I do not think that it is worth remembering the kind of "strong friendship" which Moscow and Belgrade established after Josip Broz Tito had quarrelled with Joseph Stalin.

Not only our inter-state relations were lukewarm. There was no much warmth at the personal level, either. The majority of Soviet people did not divide the people of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into Serbs, Croats or Slovenes. For us they all--Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Moslems--were Yugoslavs. Yugoslavs, for their part, who could tour Europe without a visa and sooner reckoned their own country as part of the West often looked down on Russians.

Today, when Serbs are experiencing difficulties, when they have found themselves in complete isolation and set the whole of Europe against themselves, Belgrade suddenly remembered its Russian ally. Well, it is a good thing. The bad thing is what they lay demands on Russia.

The history of Russian-Serb relations irrefutably testifies to the fact that we owe nothing to the Balkan people. Russia has done more for the Serbs than it has ever received from them. That is why in each concrete case our diplomats, casting all emotions away and not yielding to psychological pressure, should decide in cool blood how to behave.

During the war in Bosnia and Croatia Moscow did not enter into conflict with the West for Belgrade's sake and did not threaten to take "adequate measures" in response to NATO's air strikes. Russia recognized the independence of Bosnia and Croatia and voted for sanctions against Yugoslavia in the UN Security Council. Hardly may anyone reproach us for "betrayal".

It were the Serbs who shelled "the jewel of the Adriatic Sea"--Dubrovnik, sieged Sarajevo and demolished Srebnitsa. What is more, they encroached on the fundamental principle of the inviolability of borders, thereby affecting not only Western but also Russian interests, because if, for instance, whole regions were permitted to separate from Croatia today, Chechnya would refer to this precedent tomorrow.

Russia is interested in the preservation of the territorial integrity of the new independent states in the territory of what used to be the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Otherwise, the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, and the Balkans will be heading to chaos and sanguine inter-ethnic wars. That is why it was necessary to stop the Serbs who decided to change borders with the help of arms.

The Kosovo conflict is a different story. It is for the first time that the Serbs have found themselves in an unusual role of fighters for territorial integrity on which Albanians are encroaching. It is an almost 100% analogue to Chechnya. Small wonder that the Chechen authorities from the very outset stated their solidarity with the "Moslem population of Kosovo".

Russia objectively is not interested in Kosovo's separation from Yugoslavia. That is why the question asked in the headline to this article can be answered in the affirmative. Moscow should help Serbs. But the issue at hand is not that it should fight on Belgrade's side. The idea of Russia entering into confrontation with the West for the sake of the Serbs can be born only in inflamed brain. The issue at hand is diplomatic and political support.

As far as we can judge, this is exactly what our diplomats have been doing. And not because we owe anything to anyone, but because it is useful for us in this particular case.

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Johnson's Russia List

#2301

7 August 1998

davidjohnson@erols.com