ANALYSIS: Trends of 2020 – Eastern Europe & Russia
EER Editor Sarah Weber contributed to this Trends of 2020 piece.
Max Dunat (SFS ‘22) and Sarah Weber (SFS ‘23) are the Eastern Europe & Russia editors of the Caravel. The content and opinions of this piece are theirs and theirs alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Caravel’s newsroom staff.
Last year marked a time of political and social change in Eastern Europe and Russia, often accompanied by protest, rifts, and widespread unrest. The region attempted to stay the course it had set in the past decade, which involved maintaining power structures, key alliances, and escalating tensions, particularly in the countries bordering Russia. 2020 looks to usher in a year of predominant status quo movements, given the entrenched corruption and concentrated political power centered in the region. Despite this, some countries have undergone periods of true change, perhaps inspiring a progressive vision of Eastern Europe and Russia as the region trudges into a new decade. Given the trends of the past year, here is what to watch for in the coming year.
The Caravel’s sections are divided along these geographical lines.
Russia Continues to Creep Forward
Chief among nearly every Eastern European country’s concerns is the growth of Russian influence and territory. Russia has avoided direct confrontation with other nations, instead choosing to covertly fund terrorist groups or governments in order to advance its own interests through proxy wars. In Syria, Putin’s alignment with Turkish President Erdogan resulted in their joint control of the area alongside Syria’s own government following the withdrawal of the United States’ support of Kurdish forces in October. Putin and Erdogan recently reached a similar compromise in Libya. Across the Middle East and northern Africa, Russia has muscled its way into existing conflicts, emerging as a broker of diplomatic relations and leaving its distinctive mark on the fledgling governments of violence-ridden nations.
In Eastern Europe, Russia’s expansion has been slow enough to avoid military conflict while still gaining land along the border. Countries directly bordering Russia have been most affected. The prime minister of Georgia reported that Russia still occupies around 20 percent of Georgia’s entire territory, as the already fraught relations between the two countries continue to disintegrate amid violent anti-Russia demonstrations in Tbilisi. In response, Russia’s Duma voted to increase sanctions on Georgia, exercising their economic supremacy in a region marked by its poverty. Russia’s continued pressure on Georgia extends not only to sanctions but to land claims; the Russian army, still occupying the legally Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, continues its gradual move westward, annexing swaths of Georgian farmland in a largely ignored borderization effort.
A sign along the Russia-Georgia border, where borderization efforts have claimed Georgian land as Russian territory. (Wikimedia Commons)
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the Steinmeier Formula in early October in an attempt to appease Russian-backed rebels in the Ukrainian region of the Donbas in a move that ignited outrage among Ukrainians, who view it as a cessation to Moscow’s fast-growing list of demands. The formula stipulates that the Donbas will have the opportunity to hold local elections to determine the region’s status. This essentially paves the way for the Donbas to secede from Ukraine, potentially allowing the region to fuse with Russia in the coming years. Zelensky has demanded that Russian troops withdraw from the Donbas before holding local elections, which, given the ongoing violent conflict in the region, is unlikely to occur, perpetuating the Donbas’ state of limbo in the year to come.
Even Russia’s traditional allies in Eastern Europe appear to be edging away from Russia as the threat of invasion lingers. Earlier this year, Russia placed sanctions on Belarus, once a close ally, in a bid to pressure the nation to integrate with Russia. Belarus’s current president, Alexander Lukashenko, has held power for over 15 years, presiding over a government that has maintained much of its Soviet-era conservatism, mirroring Russia’s post-U.S.S.R. course as a nation. In response to the sanctions on oil––one of Belarus’s largest industries and the virtual lifeblood of the nation––Lukashenko announced the revival of its diplomatic relations in the United States, which had previously stagnated for 11 years following Belarus’s expulsion of American diplomats in 2008.
As the year progresses, Russia will likely continue to flex its diplomatic and military muscle while maintaining plausible deniability across Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Putin has proved himself an immensely patient leader over the course of his two-decade reign, and, while unlikely to deliberately ignite costly new conflict, he will take advantage of the social and political upheavals that will arise over the course of the year throughout the rest of the world.
Elections Indicate Growing Popularity of Pro-Western Leaders
2019’s elections in Eastern Europe were almost universally rife with tension and often marked by accusations of fraud and vote miscounting. Despite this, many of the elections displayed growing pro-Western popular sentiment, often fueled by the desire to reap the economic and political benefits of EU membership. Votership alone, however, proved insufficient to unseat despots throughout the region, and suppression of democracy is likely to persist in the absence of substantial anti-corruption crusades.
Ukrainian President Zelensky met with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as part of his campaign of Westernization. (Wikimedia Commons)
In Kosovo, center- and left-leaning parties, Vetevendosje and LDK, achieved a substantial victory over the right-wing PDK. The election ushered in the first opposition party since Kosovo’s independence in 2008 and marked a victory against corruption and a sharp turn from the nationalist sentiment of the PDK. In Turkey, too, elections shook the establishment as the candidate of the liberal-leaning People’s Republican Party took the office of mayor of Istanbul, an indicator of the crumbling control of President Erdogan’s right-wing AKP party; the defeat marked the first time in 25 years that the AKP will not have control of that seat.
Ukraine elected to the presidency the former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who ran on a campaign of Westernization and pushback against Russian pressure in the Donbas. His leadership has been far from remarkable, with the exception of his concession to the demand for elections in the rebel-held Donbas and his involvement in an apparent quid pro quo with President Trump in the ongoing impeachment scandal. Political outsiders were popular elsewhere in Eastern Europe as well: in Slovakia, anti-corruption lawyer Zazuna Caputova, also running on a pro-European platform, won the presidency following a year marked by chaos after the murders of journalist Jan Kuciak and his wife in the country in 2018.
Election fraud abounded across the region in 2019. In Kosovo, authorities reported that envelopes containing ballots mailed from Serbia had poisoned members of the national election commission. In Moldova, the Constitutional Court approved the previously contested parliamentary votes in what an opposition leader called “the least democratic elections in the history of Moldova”. Independent observers condemned Belarus’s election for its apparent ignorance of the democratic process, with opposition leaders barred from running based on fabricated violations of the voting process. Lack of transparency is a consistent issue in a region bogged down by corrupt officials and long-seated leaders or ruling parties.
Many elections in 2020 will help decide the path forward for the region. The presidential election in Poland will bring contention following the narrow loss of majority for the right-wing ruling party, the PiS, in 2019. The Slovakian parliamentary elections represent a chance for left-leaning forces to take advantage of President Caputova’s momentum. And in Belarus, President Lukashenko may find his advantage slipping as tensions with Russia rise.
Unpopular Leadership Decisions Incite Protest
With elections leaving much of Eastern Europe in political flux, Hungary and Czechia exemplified states caught between elections, as conservative prime ministers received intense pushback against unpopular policies. Both nations have experienced years of societal decline, much of it due to, at least in part, by leadership figures. Both countries have also seen corruption on near-extreme levels, a common feature of Eastern European states, perhaps indicating future unrest that may spread to surrounding nations.
Early in 2019 and continuing well into the year, Hungarian citizens took to the streets to protest the so-called Slave Law, an amendment that essentially eradicates the ability of workers to receive overtime pay. In June, protests again erupted following a law that the government would oversee academic research and institutions, stripping the nation’s universities of their ability to work independently. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán shows no sign of loosening his tight control over what has increasingly been deemed a pseudo-fascist regime. Now deep into his third term with polling numbers placing him far ahead of any opposition party, his anti-immigration stance and the economic stability that has persisted under his leadership will likely keep him in the prime minister’s seat for years to come.
Czechia, too, was rocked by protests in 2019, mainly concerning the allegations of fraud leveled against current Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. In June and again in November, on the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, Czechs assembled in Prague to protest Babiš’s refusal to acknowledge the charges, of which the Czech Supreme Court has since acquitted him. The billionaire prime minister rose to power in 2017, and his leadership has been marked by anti-establishment sentiment and intense polarization of public opinion. Like Orbán, Babiš has expressed little concern about the protests, as proven by his consistently, and perhaps suspiciously, high approval ratings.
Czech protestors gather in Prague’s Letna Park, the site of the Velvet Revolution protests 30 years ago. (Wikimedia Commons)
With nationalism, xenophobia, and conservatism on the rise in Eastern Europe, the protests in Hungary and Czechia are likely indicators of similar upheaval in the next year in nations where corruption and election fraud are rampant. Growing sentiment against populist movements may remain confined to the streets as a generation of right-wing leaders, buoyed by the populist front making its way across Europe, continues to reign across the region.
Women’s and LGBT Rights Come to a Head
The conservatism of Eastern Europe and Russia, a holdover from the Soviet era, continues to show little sign of abatement despite protests and movements organized by human rights groups across the region. Laws prohibiting homosexuality and reports of domestic abuse continued to plague the region, and violent demonstrations of anti-LGBT and -women’s rights movements accompanied significant successes.
Ukraine’s inaugural Pride parade took place on September 16 as around 2,000 marchers turned out in Kharkiv, the nation’s second-largest city, to celebrate LGBT rights in a move hailed by activists as a step toward equality. (Ukrainian law prohibits same-sex marriage by the omission of any marriage outside one between a man and a woman.) While largely considered a success, the march was also the subject of intense vitriol and attempted violence: Kharkiv’s mayor attempted unsuccessfully to ban the event, and 2,500 police officers guarded the march against counterprotesters, who threw eggs at marchers.
Ukrainian activists gathered for the nation’s inaugural Pride parade on September 16, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)
Similar hostility greeted a critically acclaimed Georgian film featuring a love affair between two male dancers, whose premiere in Tbilisi encountered intense protests. The film, “And Then We Danced,” is a radical departure from Georgia’s social taboo against homosexuality––a taboo that has come under even more strain after an archpriest’s accusation of sodomy leveled against the Georgian Orthodox Church’s patriarch. The violent reactions to the film coincided with the allegations, leaving Georgia to grapple with intense homophobia at a time of social and religious upheaval.
The cases in Georgia and Ukraine are not isolated. Throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, members of the LGBT community have experienced countless instances of persecution, sometimes even carried out by the government itself. In Russia’s Chechnya region, murky reports of anti-gay purges have surfaced, with victims describing their kidnappings at the hands of policemen followed by brutal beatings and forced outing to family members. Few laws discouraging hate crimes against LGBT people currently exist, allowing anti-gay protesters to attack members of the LGBT community with virtual impunity. As countries express interest in joining the EU as insurance against Russian borderization, however, leaders may make attempts to prioritize legislation against hate crimes, as the EU prioritizes LGBT equality as a necessary trait of a member state.
LGBT people are not the only group to face increased persecution in the region; women, too, have experienced curbs on their rights within the past years. In 2018, the Russian Duma essentially legalized domestic abuse, discouraging women to go to the police to report their abusers; instances of domestic abuse in Russia have since skyrocketed. Reports of grisly domestic abuse cases and the Russian justice system’s tendency to punish victims of abuse, rather than perpetrators, have dominated news cycles both in Russia and abroad, and, despite Western condemnation, the Duma has shown little attempt to amend the law.
Between government-sponsored repression of freedom of identity and the increasingly loud resistance of those who experience that repression, 2020 may prove to be the tipping point for women’s and LGBT rights in Eastern Europe. Same-sex marriage remains illegal throughout nearly the entire region, and the 2019-2020 GIWPS WPS index, which ranks countries in their performance in the areas of female inclusion, justice, and security, placed every Eastern European nation below the index rating benchmark of 0.86. With protests and marches ramping up around the globe, Eastern Europe will likely be a vital testing ground for identity equality in the coming years. The additional challenges facing the region—fascism, election fraud, Russian interference—will inform a difficult year for Eastern Europe, but also provide hope that pressure on entrenched systems of discrimination and corruption may result in positive socio-political change, however gradual that change may be.