The “Color Revolutions” and “Arab Spring” in Russian Official Discourse

Abstract

IntroductionThe color in the post-Soviet space initially understood to mean the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004) and Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005). The one feature these events share is considered to be the non-violent nature of the regime change resulting from mass protests. The 2010 revolution in Kyrgyzstan may also be relegated to this group of cases: although the revolution was not entirely peaceful it nonetheless led to a change in the country's leadership. Somewhat less clear are regime change attempts or mass protests, for example the situation in Andijan (Uzbekistan) in 2005 or the mass protests and riots in Moldova in 2009. It is still unclear whether the power shift in Ukraine in February 2014 should be considered a color revolution; there is also no precise definition of the concept of the spring, which is usually thought to include the mass upheaval and protests, more often not peaceful, that led (or did not lead) to regime change in a number of countries of the Arab world starting in late 2010. Despite the lack of consensus among political leaders and experts regarding terminology, on the whole the terms color and spring have caught on and as a rule are used without further explanation in Russian official discourse in the expert community and in the media.Russia's most recent version of its Foreign Policy Concept, dated 18 February 2013, contains no mention of color or spring either in the list of threats or in the section on regional priorities. The previous version also did not contain an official position on the problem of revolutions in the post-Soviet space. On the eve of the NATO summit of 4-5 September 2014 in Great Britain, information appeared in the Russian news media that Russia would adopt a new edition of its Military Doctrine by the end of 2014, and that an interagency commission had been created under the Office of the Russian Security Council to draft it. In an interview, the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Mikhail Popov stated that the new version was needed due to the emergence of new challenges and threats to Russia's security, which, in addition, were manifested in the events of the spring, in the armed conflict in Syria, and in the situation in and around Ukraine.1Why did Russia not include the problem of revolutions in its concept documents on foreign policy and security? This is thought to be connected to the fact that prior to the 2014 crisis in Ukraine Russia considered revolutions to be a purely internal matter and did not deem it necessary to state its position regarding events that did not go beyond the sovereignty of those countries where revolutions took place or mass protests occurred. Despite the absence of revolutions as problems addressed in the foreign policy conceptual documents, Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, as well as Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials-most notably foreign minister Sergey Lavrov- repeatedly stated Russia's position regarding the color revolutions, the events of the spring, the Ukrainian events of 2014 and other various mass protests that did not escalate into revolutions or lead to regime change. This article presents an overview of official Russian discourse from the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, as well as events of the spring.The Color Revolutions of 2003-2005 in the Post-Soviet SpaceThere is an opinion extant among experts that the Russian leadership's primary fear regarding the color is the spread or deliberate export of revolutions to neighboring countries, including Russia. However, in his 2005 interviews Vladimir Putin identifies other problematic consequences of color revolutions:My greatest concern personally is not that some kind of tumultuous events are occurring there, but that they go beyond current law and the constitution. …