Smart Power in Crimea

The Crimean situation is often understood only with hard power, Russia projecting its military might and claiming territory for itself. What is less understood is their use of smart power to retain their grip on the region. Crimea has had a complex history, one with numerous demographic shifts. It is these shifts that have allowed Russia to affect Crimean politics so easily. Crimea's indigenous population are known as the Tatars, and until the Ottoman Empire relinquished its land across the Black Sea, they have been the majority population. Soviet "resettlement" projects codified the Tatar population as traitorous for allegedly collaborating with Nazi Germany, something there was little proof of, as an excuse to move millions of them to central Asian Turkic nations like Uzbekistan, then under Soviet control. Russians then became the majority population, even through Nikita Khrushchev "gifting" it to the Ukrainian SSR in the 50s. Russia has used this majority Russian population to maintain its legitimacy as the rightful owner of Crimea, and along with providing economic benefits for Russians moving in, they have systematically erased Tatar representation in the government. Maintaining a military presence in the region, utilizing cyber power to influence opinion in Crimea, cultural power by erasing Tatar representation and human rights to provide more benefits for Russians, and leveraging its political power to retain its legitimacy over the region, despite the lack of international support for their actions. Crimea wasn't simply Russian imperialism for imperialism's sake, it has been a targeted campaign of erasure against the Tatar population, attempting to completely Russify the region to ensure their grip over it. This isn't without historical precedent. Russia's status as a federation of numerous autonomous states and ethnic groups has been questionable at best, offering significant benefits for identifying as Russian and not providing support for the preservation of indigenous culture, Karelia being a prime example of this. For a more direct comparison, the Soviet Socialist Republics under the soviet union were frequently targeted by Russification, Belarus nearly losing its language, Latvia gaining a significant Russian-speaking minority, generally with a better economic outlook than normal Latvians, and Ukraine developing a similar minority, all of these helped along in no small part by Russian-oriented infrastructure dating back to the Tsarist era. All of these efforts have been uses of cultural smart power, military hard power having less to do with Russia's stranglehold over the Warsaw Pact than it would seem from the outside. Crimea hasn't been a direct exercise in hard power, but rather cultural smart power supplemented by other kinds of power that directly contribute to Russia's influence.

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