From the CIAO Atlas Map of Europe 

CIAO DATE: 10/02

International Affairs

International Affairs:
A Russian Journal

No. 4, 2002

 

Russia's Political History and Foreign Policy

Iurii Pivovarov *

Let's have a look at the external and internal dimensions of Russia's political history. How are they related? Which of them is more important, to put it plainly? Before answering these (slightly naïve) questions let me remind you some well-known facts. Russia and its nation have found themselves in a unique situation. For five centuries, starting with independent Muscovite state, Russia was consistently extending. In particular, it needed access to seas. Today, we are witnessing, and are hence involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in a reverse process.

We seem to be living in the times of Alekseii Mikhailovich, the "gentle czar." We are living in the times when the left-bank Ukraine was not yet annexed. Russia's historical territory is contracting; the country is retreating from the seashore and developing into a landlocked state situated on the planes. We should not forget that in the twentieth century we lived through similar experience twice. Today, the process seems (alas!) to be irreversible.

This happened for the first time during World War I and the Russian revolution and was registered in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In 1918 Russia lost a huge chunk of its territory: 780 thousand sq km with 56 million people living on it (nearly a third of the Russian Empire's total population). The Brest-Litovsk episode was a short one and the lost territories were restored. By October 1941 the Soviet Union lost even vaster territories and even a greater number of people (about 1 million sq km and 42 percent of its population). This, too, ended in territorial extension.

The third episode has deprived us of about 1 million sq km and 75 million people (17-18 million of them Russians). It is wrong to say that Russia is still a vast country: a glance at the climatic map of the world confirms this. The loss of 75 million Europeans is a drama both because of scale and consequences.

This is the context we are living in–it is directly opposite to the country's previous historical development and its vector, to say nothing of economic collapse.

Let's speak about the external factor of Russia's political history and its impact on Russia's domestic policy.

At the very beginning of Volume 3 of his famous Kurs russkoi istorii (A Course of Russian History) Vassily Kliuchevsky wrote: "There is hardly any other country the domestic situation of which was affected by its international situation to a greater extent than in Russia." Pavel Miliukov agreed with Kliuchevsky: "All three general Russian histories (by Shcherbatov, Karamzin, and Soloviev) are based on stories about Russia's foreign policies."

This raises a question: why was it precisely in Russia that foreign policies affected domestic policies in a great and even decisive way? What are the roots of this influence?

Sergei Soloviev, another prominent Russian historian, offered a convincing and exact explanation: "Russia is a huge continental state unprotected by natural borders and open in the east, south, and west… From the very beginning it was doomed to fight, in a hard and exhaustive way, the steppe peoples… The poor nation scattered across vast expanses had to be constantly ready to gather forces with great difficulty, to give away money earned with hard labor to protect itself from the enemies pressing from all sides so that to preserve its highest wealth–independence. The poor agrarian country of land-tillers had to keep a huge army all the time."

Our contemporary, another Russian historian, has written: "From the very beginning of the Russian State defense and security [foreign-policy issues.–Iu.P.] were dominating over all other needs. All other needs of the country and the nation came second to the problems of inviolability of the territory and security of the people. This required power authoritative enough to use coercion to force people agree to depravations to keep a huge army and to prevent people from fleeing to all sides of the boundless Russian plain to escape oppression and coercion. The problem of power with an inordinate potential of violence has pushed to the forefront political, rather than development factors."

Pavel Miliukov in his brilliant Ocherki russkoi kultury (Essays on Russian Culture) developed the same subject: "By the late 15th century the Muscovite State had become a veritable military camp, military headquarters of an army resolved to colonize southern and eastern lands. This inexorable process pushed the old economic concerns of the 'forefathers' aside: there were new and more complicated problems–money and an army. Starting with the 15th century and for a long time to come central power in Russia became completely preoccupied with these two problems. All other important reforms, especially reforms of state administration, were caused, in the final analysis, by these two needs."

Here are some conclusions: Russia's specific geographic location predetermined, in many respects, the fact that foreign policy dominated its internal policy. This is quite natural. It was Napoleon who said that foreign policies of all states depended on their geography. In the 20th century, Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev said that Russian geography had "devoured" Russian history.

Russia's unique territorial and geographic location created a corresponding foreign policy mainly concerned with protecting the country along its frontiers (except the northern one). Karl Haushofer, father of geopolitics, wrote: "Ensured protection played a decisive role in the history of Russia."

Further. Its foreign-policy situation turned Russia into a military camp, which it remained for many centuries (Kliuchevsky: "The Muscovite state is armed Great Russia") with militarized mentality and the type of power that was actually super-power, or power with a "massive potential of coercion" and a corresponding social type where the dimension of power dominated over everything else.

Everything, absolutely everything in Russia was subordinated to the country's foreign-policy tasks. Society, economics, finances, and administrative institutes were adjusted to fit them.

Miliukov reminded us that between the late 15th and early 18th centuries the country had lived through five radical reforms of state administration, some of them cutting deeper than others, all of them dictated by foreign-policy tasks and caused by the need to improve the state's military organization and military instruments. In the 1490s, the country received cavalry conscripted from among the nobles; in 1550 a regular infantry (strel'tsy) appeared; in the 1620s, foreign officers were invited to Russian military service in great numbers and regiments of "foreign formation" were created (Russia acquired a large army and caught up with France, the European leader in this respect); in the 1680s, three permanent "armies" were stationed in Sevsk, Novgorod, and Belgorod), new type of cavalry was organized (dragoons and reiters), in 1700-1720 Peter the Great set up his army and Navy.

As the history of Russia, at least its general outlines, is well known I shall omit a list of corresponding reforms of state administration.

Proceeding from what Miliukov said I shall try here to demonstrate how the foreign-policy tasks resolved with military means affected Russia's domestic policies and social development:

One can see that Russia's three foreign-policy tasks formed three historical epochs: the Muscovite State, the Petersburg Empire, and the post-reform Russia (between the abolition of serfdom in 1861 to the abolition of monarchy in 1917).

The foreign-policy factors loom large in Russians' self-identification: they often describe themselves as "Westerners," "Slavofils," "Eurasians," etc.

Let's have a look at a different dimension.

There were three major ideologies, or mythologemes, in the history of Russia: "Moscow the Third Rome," "Christian Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Folk Spirit," and the communist ideology. All of them described the place of Russia in the world and in history and strongly affected its domestic policy through the external aspect.

According to the first of them Christian Orthodoxy represented the Truth that Moscow guarded after the downfall of Byzantium. The mythical center of the inhabited world moved to Moscow. Russia acquired the unique and the final (nothing was expected to happen after that) place in the world. It was the master of the world's future. Hence–"we are better than all others" and "we do not need their wisdom."

Domestic policies were shaped accordingly: the institute of czar and his power acquired additional importance (the czar was looked at as a priest and the guardian of Christian Orthodoxy). The political arena contracted to the size of czarist authorities that was gradually developing into the only subject of Russian history. All relationships became sacralized. This happened during the Renaissance, an era of secularization.

"Christian Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Folk Spirit" was an anti-European and anti-Western formula. It was formulated in response to Russia's role of a pupil, an imitator of the external world, it was an answer to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. It counterpoised "us" and "them." Autarchy, reaction, and rejection of reforms were reigning inside the country separated with an iron curtain from the rest of the world. As a result, Russia had to look for its place in the world.

During the revolution Russia lived through another bout of messianism (this time, quasi-religious.) The idea of the Third International was a secular variant of the Moscow the Third Rome concept. This new idea accepted Marxism-Leninism as its ideological garb, which entrusted Russia with a messianic role of establishing Absolute Social Justice throughout the world. We should bear in mind that while the Third Rome myth was potentially univesalist, communism was openly and consciously unversalist. The Constitution of 1924 registered the dream of a "Republic of Soviets embracing the entire globe." It said: "Admission to the Union [the USSR.–Iu.P.] is open to all socialist republics, both existing today and those that may appear in future." It described the appearance of the USSR as "a new and resolute step towards uniting all toilers of all countries into a worldwide socialist Soviet republic."

Russian jurist N. Gronski was the first to understand the fundamentally novel nature of the "Soviet statehood" and its universalist character. Indeed, it was for the first time in constitutional practice that power was not limited by a certain territory (that is, was not spatially limited). He wrote: "The Soviet Republic has hospitably opened its doors to all nations and states. It invites them to join the Union under one indispensable condition: they should accept the Soviet form of government and accomplish a communist coup. As soon as people on Borneo, Madagascar or in Zululand establish Soviet power and communist system these potential Soviet republics will be accepted to the Union of Communist Republics on the mere strength of their applications. If Germany wanted to switch to the communist boons, if Bavaria or Hungary wanted to repeat the experiments of Kurt Eisner and Bela Kun then these countries might join the Soviet Federation… The state [the USSR.–Iu.P.] has no limits, its ideal is to embrace all nations of the world… The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic is not a firmly rooted state structure, it can disappear at any moment [this was what happened in 1991!–Iu.P.] At the same time, it is capable of boundless extension, limited solely by the globe's surface."

In principle, there were two variants of spreading the "communist fire." The first was a permanent revolution (that Lenin regarded as possible and desirable): as soon as the White Guard scoundrels were exterminated in Russia it was planned to move to Warsaw and Berlin.

The second variant was construction of socialism in one country. By the end of his earthly life Lenin seemed to accept this variant. Yet socialism in one country should not be constructed for the sake of this country alone and but to erect a fortress of world communism from which this ideology could expand elsewhere. In principle, the second variant, with different degrees of intensity and success, had been realized until the mid-1980s. It proved to be the key variant.

There is another important aspect. Even before lenins-trotskiys and stalins of all sorts formulated their ideas of the "worldwide communist fire" the Russians had had a home-produced idea of a "worldwide fire." Aleksandr Block in his "Twelve" said: "The world fire is in the blood—God bless us!" This is how a metaphysicist and a symbolist put it. Fedor Tiutchev, a diplomat and political geographer (and a metaphysicist and a symbolist at the same time. Thank God, we have two Tiutchevs in one person—here I refer to Tiutchev the politician), said the same in a different way: "Moscow and the city of Peter, and the city of Constantine are the cherished capitals of the Russian state. Where are its boundaries and where are its limits in the north, the east, the south and in the land of sunset? Future alone will say. There are seven inland seas and seven great rivers from the Nile to the Neva, from the Elbe to China, from the Volga to the Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube. This is the Russian kingdom and it will remain forever just like it was predicted by the Holy Ghost and forecasted by Daniel."

Here Tiutchev had in mind Prophet Daniel of the Old Testament and his idea of consecutive kingdoms, one of the major sources of the "Moscow the Third Rome" conception.

The "worldwide fire" was not extinguished when the splendid Petersburg (Westernized and Slavophilic) Empire perished. In a weird way its dream of unbounded spaces, unlimited territory became part of communist universalism. Pavel Kogan and Mikhail Kulchitskiy, two young poets of genius killed in World War II, blended Tiutchev and Lenin's ideas into one: "We shall reach the Ganges, we shall perish in battles to make our Motherland shine from Japan to England" (Pavel Kogan).

This universal scope is a permanent and system-forming feature of our culture.

How did foreign-policy factors affect domestic policies under Bolsheviks? They looked at themselves as people whose calling was to change history according to the laws of historical development they had cognized. On the other hand, they felt that their knowledge placed them above history. Hence their psychological conviction that everything was permitted to them and everything was acceptable. In other words, the ideas of Bolsheviks created a specific metaphysical voluntarism accompanied with a very specific form of legitimacy embodied in "metahistoric" chimeras.

This social organization and system of power, and the mode of thinking were pathological—this was pathology of power. The tentacles of communism tried to reach all cells of the world socium and embrace the entire globe in the course of a worldwide revolution. Rationality was sacrificed to the irrationality of power. All contradictions had to be removed through violence. Violence permeated both the inner structures and protruded outside the country.

One should point out that there were two types of Russian communism, two types of its foreign policy, and two types of its domestic policy determined, to a great degree, by foreign policies. They are versions according to Lenin and according to Stalin: the former relied on a world revolution, the latter, on "construction of socialism in one country."

Correspondingly, Leninism was mainly preached by former political émigrés who had worked together with French socialists and German social democrats and who socialized in cafes of European capitals frequented by émigrés. For this reason, Leninism was mainly oriented on a worldwide revolution and its, so to speak, horizontal proliferation to Europe and the rest of the world. This is a type of horizontal mobilization. Stalinism was mainly preached by a party functionary, one of "us" working in the provinces. His horizon was limited by a gubernia where he lived all his life. The slogan of "socialism in one country" was close to his heart. Stalinism was mainly vertical proliferation of the idea of a revolution, a type of vertical mobilization.

I am convinced that Petr Struve formulated one of the most topical aspects of the correlation between foreign and domestic policies. In 1908, he published an article "Great Russia: Deliberations about the Problem of Russian Might" in the Russkaia mysl journal. "Great Russia" is undoubtedly the formula of Petr Stolypin. Struve himself spoke about this. He used the formula to answer the question: "What is 'Great Russia'?" He introduced his deliberations with a description of a state (any state, not necessarily Russian): "The supreme law of any state says: any healthy and strong state, that is not only legally 'autarchic' or 'sovereign' but able to support itself, wants to be powerful. This means 'external might'." From this it inevitably follows that a weak state if not protected by squabbles of powerful states is potentially and de facto a prey of a strong state.

"From this follows that the idea of subordinating the state's external might to the question of its 'internal well-being,' understood in one way or another, is wrong."

Struve went on to specify his idea using the example very topical at that time: "The Russo-Japanese war and the Russian revolution have fully confirmed this interpretation. An utter defeat of the old system of government in the sphere in which it had been considered the strongest, the sphere of external might, was a retribution for subordinating foreign policy to domestic political considerations. On the other hand, the revolution was defeated precisely because it wanted to undermine the might of the state for the sake of certain domestic political aims."

This example is accompanied by the key theoretical conclusion: "From this it follows a thesis that might sound extremely strange for a common Russian intellectual."

"An answer to the question 'To which extent does this policy promote the so-called external might of the State', is the touchstone and the measure of the entire so-called 'domestic' polices of the cabinet and the parties."

I think that this conclusion of Struve is of great methodological importance for scholars and practicing politicians. One may say: this is a banality, Struve was not original. Russia's political history points to the opposite: the organic tie between foreign and domestic policy has been always underestimated in Russia. The powers that be and society were guilty of this. Struve himself spoke of this: "There is no doubt that external might of contemporary Russia has been undermined. Typically, the editor of our most popular 'nationalistic' newspaper in his New Year 'small letter' consoled himself with a consideration that in the coming year nobody would aggrieve us with a war because we 'would behave ourselves.' One can hardly invent a slogan less suitable for a state and a nation: 'We would behave ourselves.' We can gather and accumulate force yet a great nation cannot, under a threat of a decline and degeneration, sit still amid the moving world that is growing in an incessant struggle. By saying this our thought has demonstrated that it is amazingly helpless in the face of a of the problem of restoring Russia's external might."

Struve offered us another idea closely connected with the problem of indirect influence of foreign policies on domestic policies. A superficial glance may find the idea banal—but this is precisely a superficial opinion because the idea is a close relative of the shop-worn subject of "Europe and Russia" ("The West and Russia"). Struve added a different meaning and a different dimension to it. He was not merely the greatest political thinker of Russia of the first half of the 20th century. (This was what Nikolai Berdiaev thought of him.) He was the most prominent Russian Westerner of the 20th century, a liberal theoretician, and an inspired advocate of capitalist civilization. Petr Struve was the supreme and most accomplished type of a "Russian European" and a European-minded person.

In 1921 he drew the line under the Russian revolution by pointing to its international, or geopolitical aspect: "When after the 1870-1871 war the first president of the French Republic Thiers met in Vienna famous German historian Ranke he asked him: 'Against whom is Germany fighting once Napoleon III was deposed?" Ranke answered: 'Against Louis XIV.' Anyone who knows the history of Europe can understand the answer: it was Louis XIV who had annexed Alsace. In the last third of the 19th century Germany was fighting France to wrest Alsace from it…"

By analogy Struve offers his conclusion: "In 1914 Germany started a war against Russia and waged it against Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great." And further: "When the revolution conceived and planned by Germany had won Russia de facto withdrew from the war. What did Germany do? It began dismembering Russia, that is, ruining it. Germany aimed at this as the war's major result and its fruit… By waging the war Germany wanted, first and foremost, to destroy Russia as a great power, its historical image and historical might."

One can disagree with Struve over certain details of his analysis (Germany's role in the Russian revolution as the main goal of the war) yet one cannot deny that from the point of view of history he was completely correct. Germany wanted to push Russia back to the boundaries of Ivan III, that is, to squeeze Russia out of Europe and fit it once more into the Golden Horde's frontiers. In fact, this amounted to a revision of many centuries of Russian autocracy (both Muscovite and Petersburg). In this context, Germans did not distinguish between Russia of the nobles, or bourgeoisie or commissars. They needed weak, not strong Russia—and this was their main goal.

This was what Germany wanted—its very specific relationships with Russia are clear enough as well as its desire to weaken Russia. But why did our allies of the anti-Teutonic coalition want to weaken Russia?

"In December 1918, I left Soviet Russia and found myself in the West… in England and France. What amazed me most of all in the West, our ally, was the speed and easiness with which the public opinion in the allied countries accepted a new idea of Russia for which I can find no better name than a 'Brest-Litovsk point of view'."

Let's remember Struve's political coinage: a "Brest-Litovsk point of view." Cautiously so that not to betray his emotions (the West European nations were allies and the only hope to drive the Bolsheviks away after all) Struve enumerated everything that divided us and them: "At the same time the West European governments had no definite opinion about Russia and no definite policy towards it. The allies knew next to nothing about Russia, and were on the whole amazingly ignorant about its past and present. This is true of the governments and the public. As for the latter it displayed all shades of lack of understanding of and knowledge about Russia and even hostility towards it."

Even today one cannot but be amazed with these words. We were all fighting a deadly war together, in August 1914 the armies of Rennenkampf and Samsonov saved Paris, France, and Entente from a speedy defeat; the Brusilov offensive of May 1916 relieved the situation the allies found themselves at Verdun (and saved Italy). The Russian expeditionary corps was fighting shoulder to shoulder with French and British troops yet we still remained "strangers" for Europe. It failed to understand us, it remained hostile to us. "The Brest-Litovsk point of view" predominated.

Struve pointed to the roots of this attitude: "Historical Russia, that is United and Great Russia, had confronted, in various periods in the past, the two major great powers of Europe with which we were fighting Germany as allies… In the 19th century we fought France and England twice. These conflicts, some of them quite recent like Britain and Russia's rivalry in the East became imprinted in the public mind in the West… In the past the 'Polish Question' divided us. West European public opinion has been always against historical Russia where the 'Polish Question' was concerned… Finally, and this is most important, Russia as a Great Power was always identified with a certain political form and even with a certain political system—unlimited monarchy… The democratic elements in the West have been always hostile to 'czarism'—upon the downfall of the Russian state this hostility was easily and promptly shifted to Russia as a Great Power. These people argued that downfall of Russia spelt downfall of czarism that was an obviously positive fact."

This is true: wars with Europe, rivalry in the East, the Polish Question that the allies raised again as soon as czarism had fallen. The most pro-Western government Russia ever had—the Provisional Government—put forward a condition: independence for Poland in exchange for its obligatory and permanent alliance with Russia. The allies were seemingly ready to accept this… There are other things of which Struve wrote and which cannot but amaze.

It turned out that in the 19th century too it was not Russia and Europe that were opposing one another as different sociocultural and sociohistorical entities but the forces of social "evil," backwardness, and despotism, on the one side, and the forces of social "goodness," progress, and shining democracy. It turned out that the conflict of two opposite principles of social order was not a new one and was not born by the Russian communist revolution. It turned out that the task Europe posed itself to fell down the despotic and slavish autocracy and the totalitarian communist monster cannot be separated from another task, that of ruining Russia, at least as a great power. Probably, they are not two but one task.

It is called "Brest-Litovsk." This is the task that tied together the desire to crush Russia's social order, no matter which, and the desire to squeeze Russia back in its geopolitical "cage." Together with a crowd of Russian geniuses one is free to moan that Europe does not understand us and is hostile to us. Alas, this is meaningless. It was long time ago that the West realized that the Russian social system (damned czarism or damned communist) was riveted to Russia's deadly spatial expansion and to the times when it had expanded to Europe.

This explains why the "Brest-Litovsk point of view" dominates the West despite "possible variants."

Russian philosophers did not limit themselves to the thought of how Russia's external policy affected its internal policy in the "imperial context." They all knew that sooner or later the empire would fell apart (this happened in the late 20th century when the communist empire disappeared.) They tried to guess how this external factor would affect Russian society at home.

In his brilliant article "The Fate of Empires" Georgii Fedotov offered his variant of Russia's post-imperial and post-communist existence. He pointed out that in the 20th century all empires without exception perished and predicted a similar fate for the Soviet-Russian empire. He wrote: "Will this be the end of Russia or a new page of its history? Undoubtedly the latter. Russia will not die while the Russian nation remains alive, while it continues living on its land and use its own tongue. This is all the more probable if Byelorussia joins Russia (which is possible) and if Siberia remains its part (for many years to come). Russia will still be a huge body with a large population, the largest among the European nations. Russia will lose coal of Donbas and oil of Baku but France, Germany, and many other nations never had oil. Russia will become poorer, but only potentially, because the poverty it is living in under communists will become a thing of the past. Its military potential will shrink but it will lose any significance if general disarmament is achieved. If it is not achieved Russia will perish together with the rest of civilized mankind. The bitter feeling caused by the lost might will be alleviated by the fact that no rivals in old Europe will replace it. All old Empires are doomed to oblivion.

"After all, imperial consciousness was fed not so much by the interests of the state or the nation as by lust of power: the pathos of inequality, the joy of humiliating others and violating the weak. This pagan complex that existed in 19th-century Russia spelt a glaring contradiction between the state's policy and behests of its spiritual leaders. Russian literature was the world's conscience while the state was a scarecrow for all freedom-loving peoples. The loss of the Empire means moral purification, liberation of Russian culture from the appalling burden that distorted its moral image.

"Freed from police and military duties Russia will be able to return to its domestic problems and start building up free social democracy for the sake of which the nation underwent appalling sufferings. At the same time, the Russian people were hardened by communism and became callous. Several generations will be probably required to educate it and to return it to the wilted tradition of Russian culture and, through it, to Russian Christianity. It is high time for the Russian intelligentsia to abandon the chase of the mythical imperial eagles and to start readying itself to fulfill this role."

Ivan Ilyin and the Eurasians thought differently. They equated empire and Russia's continued existence. I shall not repeat here their arguments—they are well known. I would like to say that amid the drama of collapse (all empires collapsed with a certain degree of drama) it is wise to listen to Fedotov and Kliuchevsky who wrote several decades before the former: "As our territory expanded the nation's force outside the country increased while its freedom inside the country decreased. People's forces were suppressed by the tension of people's activity; power was increasing its scope on the conquered expanses but the strength of the popular spirit drained away. New Russia's successes outside its boundaries bring to mind the flight of a bird carried away by a gale much stronger than its wings."

By way of conclusion I would like to say a few words about the influence domestic policy exerts on foreign policy. This is a paradox—the entire pathos of my contribution was to prove the opposite. Being reasonable people we all know that this influence is also present in politics. I would like to quote Gladstone who said that good rule inside the country was his major foreign-policy principle. Iuri Samarin, an outstanding Russian thinker and public figure of the 19th century, said after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War and the Paris Treaty of 1856: "We capitulated not to the foreign forces of the western alliance but to our own domestic impotence… We should look at ourselves and study the roots of our weakness, to listen to a truthful description of our domestic needs and dedicate our attention and means to meet them. It is inside Russia, not in Vienna, Paris or London we shall recapture our rightful place among other European nations. A state's foreign policy and political weight depend not on ties with reigning dynasties, the skill of its diplomats and the amount of silver and gold locked in the state's coffers. They do not depend even on the size of the army. They depend most and foremost on the integrity and strength of the social organism."

Endnote

Note *: Iurii Pivovarov, Director, Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences; President, Russia's Association of Political Sciences; RAS Corresponding Member; Doctor of Sciences (Political Sciences); Moscow State University, Professor.  Back.