Preconditions for the Crimean Spring in Russian historiography and publicism

This article examines how Russian researchers have been constructing a narrative and a timeline to illustrate the causality and completeness of the Crimean Peninsula’s incorporation into the Russian Federation in 2014. It highlights a shift in the perceptions of historians, political scientists, and publicists regarding the temporal scope of events preceding the Crimean Spring, identifies several storylines (e. g., Russian-Ukrainian political, administrative, and military relations or the development of pro-Russian movements in Crimea), and analyzes discrepancies among researchers constructing the system of preconditions for Crimea’s rejoining Russia. Arguing that the historical knowledge about the Crimean Spring, in its current state, is strongly influenced by the presentism, the author formulates a vector approach as a method of analyzing causal event sequences constructed by authors so that it is tailored to a particular final event. The formulated method includes the so-called “principle of erigence” (the inclusion of unrelated events into the narrative to artificially straighten it and shift the focus to the desired path) and the “principle of counter-erigence” (the exclusion of key events from the narrative), both of which distort the objective understanding of the preconditions for the analyzed events. This study demonstrates that the emotional aftermath of the 2014 events has led Russian historians, political scientists and publicists to unjustifiably expand the list of events preceding the Crimean Spring. Over time, this list has been narrowed down again, which has improved the accuracy of comparative research. Interestingly, the interstate relations (including military ones) have received more comprehensive historiographical examination compared to other narrative threads, such as social aspects. These varying threads differ both in the number of publications and in the concentration of events within specific segments of the chronological narrative axis, with this distinction being particularly evident between 2003 and 2013.