On self-determination

“The secret of Chimneys” is the title of a 1925 murder mystery-romance by Agatha Christie, the prolific British crime writer. It involves a British plot to restore the monarchy to a fictitious Balkan country called Herzoslovakia, to gain access to oil concessions.

In her time Christie was thinking of the post-WWI demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which for a time ended up as Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia, and also the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Call it self-determination, and there was a lot of it about:

1918 – Baltic States, Finland, Georgia and Ukraine declare independence

1919 – Miklós Horthy dictator in Hungary, after failed Communist overthrow

1920 – Russia invades eastern Poland, and is repelled

1921 – Ottoman armed forces under Mustafa Kemal move on Greek population in Asia Minor

1922 – USSR crushes Ukrainian independence; Benito Mussolini premier of Italy; Kemal, now Atatürk, president of Turkey

1923 – Adolf Hitler imprisoned on declaring a revolution in Munich

1924 – USSR leader Vladimir Lenin dies, is replaced by Josef Stalin

1925 – Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published

These events are sampled from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s 2022 masterpiece, The World: A Family History. In this vivid portrayal of just how bloodthirsty most of world history is, I find myself wondering at how the human race has survived at all, let alone thrived, in places at least.

In a footnote, the author writes, “Self-determination was a noble ideal, still accepted today as the correct basis for the organisation of the modern world -  with nation states as the ideal good structure, empires as obsolete and bad. But at its heart was a paradox: the creation of nations was painful and cruel.

“The new nation states had to be hacked out of territories long ruled by multi-ethnic empires. The comfort of belonging to a nation has a cost: the exclusion of those who do not. While empires often protected ethnic minorities, nation states did the opposite: the creation of new nations usually involved partitions and expulsions.”

Montefiore backs up this view with the Turkish slaughter of Greeks in Smyrna (today, Īzmir), the division of Ireland into a Protestant north and Catholic south, the partition of India and Pakistan, and the creation of Israel, following civil war. So, he does not seem to be a fan of self-determination; the costs outweigh the benefits.

Going back to early 1918 this is what US president Woodrow Wilson said, “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.”

At the time the leaders of Great Britain, and of Russia agreed with this proposition – accepting that Lloyd George in England, and Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in Russia probably meant different things.

For the latter, there was a political tactic involved, to encourage the creation of Soviet Socialist Republics, and in this way restore the likes of Ukraine and Georgia into the fold in the early 1920s – in principle, such a republic could secede from the mothership, but in practice, this was not so easy to do.

This neatly explains the wholesale declarations of independence of nation states in 1991 and 1992, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was legal. Now it appears Russia has other ideas about that. The recent intrusion of Russian jets into Estonian air space has been seen by NATO as sabre rattling.  

Source: Estonian World

So, when is self-determination okay, and when is it not okay? Wikipedia says, “Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law, binding, as such, on the United Nations as an authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. The principle does not state how the decision is to be made, nor what the outcome should be (whether independence, federation, protection, some form of autonomy or full assimilation).”

The page also says, “the right of self-determination does not necessarily include a right to an independent state for every ethnic group within a former colonial territory. Further, no right to secession is recognised under international law”.

So, a Russian-speaking enclave in Estonia would be unlikely to succeed in a bid for independence. But what about the largely Russian-speaking parts of eastern Ukraine - Donetsk and Luhansk. Do they have a claim? Well, if they like being Russian, they could move to neighbouring Russia (and good luck with that).

Whereas for Estonians, and other peoples of this sort, Estonian territory is the only place where there were originally Estonians, and they have been there for at least 3000 years, minding their own business, or trying to. A clear case for self-determination.