The establishment by the Federation Council of a new holiday in honor of the Crimea's annexation to Russia in 1783 - a symptom of no confidence in themselves, the Russian justification for the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now the date of this annexation was decided to be moved much further, in Catherine's times. And thus attracted attention to the content of that long-standing annexation, and to the meaning of the new, Putin's.

By and large, in the approach to the annexation of the Crimea, Empress Catherine was not very different from the "king" of Vladimir. Before the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, the Crimean Khanate was dependent on the Porte, was, as we would now say, autonomous - but feudal. KYUCHUK-KAYNARJIY WORLD ASSURED INDEPENDENCE OF THE Crimea. But this independence was necessary to Russia only in order to annex the peninsula in 1783 - and not to cause thereby new complications with the Ottoman Empire.

Approximately the same thing - only at high speeds - occurred in 2014, when deputies of the Crimean parliament seized by the Russian troops first declared the independence of the Crimea, having returned (already without the expelled indigenous population of the peninsula in 1774) in 1774, and then immediately appealed to Moscow with a "request" to add a new "state" to Russia.

And in 1783, and in 2014, there was obvious fraud at the highest state level. Both times with the will of the Crimeans were not counted. In 1783, the proclamation of Crimean independence under Russian patronage led to a series of uprisings, years of instability and repression. In 2014, Crimea, in whose territory the "referendum" was imitated, again found itself in a special legal zone - even in comparison with Russia itself.

And each time Russia expected to put the world ahead of the fact of annexation, to force to recognize the occupation. In the time of "Catherine Chersonese" Catherine make it easier: Turkey recognized the Crimea as Russian already in 1791, after another war. But now to impose on the civilized world the right of the strong is much more difficult. That is why Russian deputies are forced to shift the emphasis from 2014 to 1783, when the occupation was the "norm" of international law. That is why in Russia more and more often celebrate the dates that fall on the distant past, when there were no UN Security Councils and everything was decided by war and genocide.

But it turned out that Moscow recognized a simple and obvious fact:

all the talk about "primordially Russian Crimea", at least, are ridiculous. Crimea was an independent state, in which the non-Russian population predominated, there was no "Russian world" and other imperial attributes. This state was simply occupied, annexed, deported, deprived of most of the population.

And now it will also be celebrating.

Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Join also the TSN group. Blogs on facebook and follow the updates of the section!.