The Uses and Abuses of Referendums

Referendums had a bad name after the Second World War. We tend to regard them as the most democratic way to resolve constitutional issues.  Back then they were seen as the tool of dictators.  Putin’s plan to hold plebiscites in the occupied territories of Ukraine is about to demonstrate just why.

Adolf Hitler was an avid user of the plebiscite. He used one in 1933 to justify Germany’s departure form the League of Nations and in 1934 to consolidate his dictatorship. In 1935 he used a referendum in the Saar land to justify military reunification with Germany.  The plebiscite was deployed again in 1938 to justify the unification of Austria with Germany in the Anschluss.

In 1939, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, tacitly agreed (shamefully)to a referendum of the German-speaking people of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to justify annexation – though Hitler lost patience and decided just to invade first. Later, a ballot purported to show that 90% of Sudetenland Germans supported becoming part of Germany.

So why is this apparently democratic test of opinion so attractive to dictators?  Well plebiscites are first of all a convenient way of justifying coercion ex post facto. Referendum ballots are notoriously easy to rig even when there are international observers present.  And not just by forging ballot papers or “losing” ballot boxes. By suppressing the turnout of No-voters, by overt and covert intimidation, the sponsors can magnify the strength of any Yes-to-annexation vote.  

It should be self evident that a referendum cannot be legitimate in a region of a country that has been invaded such as Ukraine.  Even if the ballot there is conducted fairly it is unacceptable to carve out a portion of an existing nation state in order to annex it.  This is what a Vladimir Putin is doing.  

He hopes that Russian speakers in the Donbas will rise to the occasion, since they have no alternative now but to become fully Russian. He will then claim that any Western-backed military action in these regions is an existential threat to Russia, justifying “all means” of retaliation including the use of nuclear weapons. Putin claims he is simply restoring to Russia a land, Ukraine, which was always part of it and should never have been “given away” after the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years ago.  This claim would have no standing in International law.  Though law has very little to do with Russia’s expansionism

It is in his use of plebiscites that Vladimir Putin reveals his true dictaorial instincts. But this has no bearing whatever on the legitimacy of any Scottish independence referendum, though some might attempt a read across.  Scotland has not been invaded and Scots have full civil rights. Scotland has already had one legitimate referendum, in 2014, with Westminster’s agreement. However, nationalists  need to be aware that plebiscites are about to get a bad rep. Again 

President Zelenskyy will rightly reject the validity of any referendums held in the Eastern provinces of Ukraine, some of which could be held as soon as next week. However, what he cannot ignore is the existence of a substantial Russian speaking population in the Donbas many of whom who have been fighting to secede from Ukraine since 2014.  Eventually their existence will have to be recognised in some way – though hopefully not by ethnic cleansing which was so brutally deployed during the wars in former Yugoslavia 30 years ago.

It is not inconceivable that there could be repression and violent reprisals if and when the Ukrainian army drives the Russian military out of Luhansk and Donetsk.  Indeed, some retribution against collaborators is almost inevitable. After 1945, the Sudeten Germans, nearly three million of them, were forced to leave Czechoslovakia in one of the biggest population movements of the last century. It may come to that in the Donbas after liberation. The West may then have to give a thought to the welfare of people on the wrong side of the conflict. 

But in the meantime Putin’s attempt to provide a democratic cover for his imperialism must be exposed and resisted. These referendums are a perversion of democracy not an expression of the popular will.