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International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
Vol. 44, No. 4/August 1998
Russia’s Way: National Identity and Foreign Policy
By S. Kortunov *
It is for over six years now that Russia has been painfully seeking its new identity in world politics. The process is far from completion: we are developing our statehood, identifying our aims and prospects, our place and role in the contemporary world. The world outside Russia is hardly prepared to help us: it is following the process with obvious suspicion. What is more, nearly all Moscow’s attempts to claim its national interests and to protect them on the world arena, be it the CIS, NATO or Russia’s relations with Iran, meet with hostility and are often interpreted in the West as “imperial ambitions.”
Regretfully, having failed so far to produce a subject of the policy of national security and the country’s development Russian national awareness is actively interfering into political behavior and assessments of political actions. We are witnessing a revival of Russian identity that is gradually squeezing out the former Soviet identity. This is what the West is afraid of.
Strange Imperialism
There are many things behind this fear. The position of the West towards Russia is ambiguous: on the one hand, lack of stability on the post-Soviet territory is frightening. Indeed, the new independent states are unable to cope with their problems single-handedly be it ethnic or religious conflicts, market development or rule of law. On the other, any integration efforts in the CIS are no less scaring: even the feeble attempts to draw closer together with Byelorussia are branded as a “revival of Russian imperial potential.”
This is especially obvious in the American policy. Russia has always been regarded as a necessary partner, a constructive dialogue with which is a must; all conflicts should be resolved peacefully without reaching a “boiling point” or another confrontation. At the same time there are numerous voices heard, the loudest coming from the republican camp, calling on Democrat Bill Clinton to pause and freeze practical cooperation with Moscow until the situation clears itself.
There are people who want a radical revision of the relationships with Russia. They argue that Russia’s economic stabilization will become a stepping stone for a revived military potential and imperial ambitions and draw a parallel between Russia and communist China thus calling for Russia’s economic and political isolation.
Certain political circles cannot rid of their overtly Russophobic sentiments, Zbignew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig being the best known examples. Not so long ago Brzezinski stated that Russia “is an unnecessary country” while Kissinger went even further saying that he would have chaos and a civil war in Russia rather a trend toward a unified strong centralized state. Such people would rather see Russia in a state of manageable disintegration into large regions with local power systems to neutralize potential upheavals at the lower levels. This approach is being realized today through Western preferences for cooperating with the regions by-passing Moscow.
Russia’s closest neighbors, CIS members included, proved to be affected by the Western cliche of Russia’s “imperial ambitions.” It seems that many of them living in a logically understandable context of national-state inferiority cannot exist as subjects of international law without multiplying fears of Russia’s alleged imperialism. This proved to be a useful instrument of getting more money out of the West. One can expect that in the foreseeable future Russia will be doomed to the role of an European scarecrow irrespective of its foreign policies.
Regrettably, there are numerous radical democrats inside Russia who actively contribute to this negative image. They call on Russia “to stop scaring Europe” which probably means that Russia should abandon its national interests. Historian Igor Chubays openly says that “NATO’s eastward movement is a response to the continued imperial policy.” In other words, Russia should not only abandon “its imperial policy”—it should go out of its way not to be imperial in the eyes of other states. This is impossible: political reality prompts us that any variant of Russia’s behavior will seem imperial to those who want to see it as such. This and similar statements of Russian liberals help those states which are trying to promote their interests at Russia’s expense. One wish to believe that the liberals are sincerely deluded rather than consciously opposing Russia’s national interests.
After the civil war in Russia linguist Nikolai Trubetskoi predicted that Russia would lose its independence. He wrote: “There will be a large part of Russian intelligentsia lauding the Roman and Germanic nations and looking down at their native country as a backward state that has to “learn a lot” from Europe. Without compunction they will serve foreign masters and diligently promote the cause of enslavement and oppression of the Russians. I can add that at first the advent of foreigners will somewhat improve the material conditions of life, that Russia will seemingly remain an independent state, and that the fictionally independent and subservient to the foreigners cabinet will seem to be extremely liberal and progressive.” At that time his forecast misfired: it was as if the scholar described our time and our liberals.
One could have ignored them if not they reflected a disquieting trend, that of denationalization of the Russian elite. The prophets of the radical reforms are prepared to blame the nation and its bad historical legacy for the reforms’ failures. In this way internal racism of the “new Russians” is formed who see themselves not missionaries but rather colonialists in their own country. They feel free here, not limited by any norms and morals. In the Soviet times and today they have been always “in opposition not to the government but to Russia,” to borrow Pushkin’s turn of phrase.
They oppose their motherland to the West and call Russia a “neo-imperialist” country with firmly rooted totalitarian traditions inherited from the past. One cannot deny that reforms in Russia have always been hard and awful sometimes. “The bloody vapor is raising over Russia,” said poet Maximilian Voloshin when describing the Petrine reforms. The words are an apt description of Stalinist industrialization. Any attempt to coordinate the mission of Russian society and the Russian state never decreased violence of the state—it even increased such violence. The state ideal has always dominated over the social. The mission of power looked more impressive than the mission of the ethnos. Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev excused the sin though believed it to be grave indeed: “Peter the Great was the state power that put itself outside the nation, that divided the nation, and brought changes to social life from outside. The sin of Peter the Great is violence over the popular customs for the sake of the state interest. This is a grave sin but it can be forgiven.”
One should keep in mind, at the same time, that the past of the democratic West knew Christian II of Denmark, Eric XIV of Sweden, Philip II of Spain, and Cesare Borgia. Our Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Vassili the Dark are no rival for these rulers. Russia had experienced nothing like Spanish auto-da-fe, Albigensian massacres, witch hunt, or the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The words Voltaire applied to England “Its history should be written by an executioner” cannot be applied to Russia. Russian authorities never recurred to cruelty seen in the West even when dealing with popular revolts and uprisings. The bloody Sunday of 9 January 1905 and the 1905 punitive expeditions pale into insignificance when compared with what Cavaignac and Galliffet did at their time in Paris.
Quite often our radical democrats in their desire to describe Russia as an imperialist country go further than prominent ideologists of American imperialism. Talbott, deputy State Secretary of the United States, admitted that “the idea that Russians are born with the instincts of the beast of prey is a crude distortion of the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.”
There are also other things. The desire of new Russia to establish economic and industrial ties with the new independent states based on a mutual and balanced foundation that would correspond to the norms of international and economic laws is often described by the leaders of this countries as imperial ambitions and economic imperialism. This was hailed in the West. In March 1997 State Secretary Albright declared that the United States would not allow Russia to pursue economic blackmail against the new states, Ukraine and the Baltic countries included. Such statements should be taken to mean that Russia is denied the right to protect its national interests. The “dual standards” policy of the West is obvious here. Our radical democrats branded the natural desire to establish equal economic relationships with these states “national egoism.” This means that the Russians should remain the donors of the no longer existing empire.
It should be noted that the word “empire” has shed its negative tinge: its is freely applied to the united Europe that is recreating the Charlemagne empire and to the worldwide Pax Americana. Yet even partial restoration of the Russian Empire (even based on a free will of nations that want to be reunited) is fiercely opposed in the West. In real life that is reflected in different standards applied to self-determination of some regions (the Baltic states, Moldavia, Georgia and Chechnya which enjoy complete support) and self-determination of some other regions that want reunification (the Dniester region, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Crimea and especially Byelorussia for which support is denied and everything is done to prevent such reunification.)
The “imperial ambitions” set phrase today is nothing more than an instrument of political and economic pressure on Russia. The West wants to present it as the defeated side in the Cold War—it is out to recarve the world as it sees it fit. The former allies and the union republics are using the phrase when shopping for additional guarantees of their security and for more money. Obviously, at the expense of Russia. This explains the suspicion with which the world is watching how national awareness of the Russians, the state-forming ethnos of Russia is revived. When asked whether the United States approved of national self-identification and national awareness of the ethnoses living on the former Soviet territory Brzezinski while approving on the whole excluded the Russians from his approval. In other words, each and every nation, except the Russians as an imperial nation, has the right to self-determination and national interests. This is hardly fair; it is also wrong to equate Russian nationalism and imperialism.
Sovietization of Orthodox Russia that took place in the past is claimed to be “forcible Russification” of small ethnic groups living in the empire. The fact that Sovietization was an active anti-Russian policy and the policy of derussification of the Russians is deliberately ignored. Meanwhile, many ethnic groups of the former Russian Empire developed into political, cultural, and social units within the Soviet Union. This is true of Byelorussians, Kazakhs (who are now called the Kazakhstanians), Ukrainians who had been a part of the Russian super-ethnos and many other new independent nations. It was in the Soviet period, the period of the Larger Russia that they acquired administrative borders. Their languages acquired an official status, national ideologies and national elites had taken shape that later contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The Russian nation proved to be the greatest victim of the Bolshevist regime. It was the Russian peasant who was deprived of the limited rights and freedoms won under the czar, and also of land and property in general. It was only once that the regime flirted with the Russian nation—during the grim years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. There was no other way to come out victorious from the war. The call to Russian self-identity and the Russians sounded on 3 July, 1941 when Stalin addressed the nation over the radio: “Brothers and Sisters!” Russians suffered most in the war. As soon as the war ended the policy of derussification of Greater Russia continued. Objecting to Gorky historian Sergei Melgunov wrote: “The Russians are ignorant, the Russian crowd may be cruel but the theories tended by the Bolshevik ideology were created neither by popular psychology nor by popular thought.”
Today, we, other nations of Great Russia together with us, are still reaping the destructive harvest of this policy. The West refuses to recognize not only the historical rights of the Russian nation to its national self-identification. It also denies the fact that the Russians were subjugated in communist Russia. The human rights activists in the West and at home ignored mass violations of human rights of the Russians in the CIS after 1991.
Russia’s imperial ambitions is a brazen lie. The country that voluntarily disbanded the Soviet communist empire without preliminary conditions cannot be imperial. In 1988–1991 the country’s leaders transferred military infrastructure of the Warsaw Treaty countries to the former allies; about 1 million of troops were removed from the country’s key strategic forefield—Central and Eastern Europe—in the shortest time possible. This was done to the detriment of the nation and the army. Such country cannot be called imperial. It was our country that agreed, without compensations, and promoted unification of the two German states. Driven by its concern over European security our country accepted asymmetric disarmament agreements: the ISRM Treaty, the CFE Treaty, the START–1 and START–2 treaties and the Convention on Chemical Weapons Ban. It is a shameless lie to call an imperial nation the people that in 1991 having put an end to the communist regime allowed all nations of the former Soviet Union to develop freely sometimes at the expense of the thousand-year-old empire, loss of some Russian lands for which their ancestors shed blood.
It is honest to recognize that at the turn of the nineties Russia embarked on the road of national democratic development. It is building up its foreign and domestic policy in accordance to this. Public consciousness has also changed: today the country’s greatness is associated not so much with military might as with economic revival and an adequate standard of living. The events of October 1993, the failed punitive expedition in Chechnya, frequent irresponsible threats from Russian political leaders addressed to other countries are recurrences of Bolshevist, rather than imperial, consciousness. Regrettably, there is a lot of Bolshevist thinking in Russia and not enough imperial consciousness.
Contemporary Imperialism
Those who ascribe imperial ambitions to new Russia should bear in mind a Biblical truth: “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Does not the country that claims world leadership in the 21st century and describes ever new parts of the globe, including the former Soviet Union, as zones of its “vital interests” demonstrate its imperial ambitions? The same country, without the slightest military provocation, extends to the east the borders of the most powerful in mankind’s history military bloc. The same country dominates with its military might nearly all countries and the World Ocean.
It was some American geopoliticians who, starting with 1991, advised to use the victory in the Cold War (who won, indeed, and who was defeated?) and the Soviet Union’s disintegration to further promote American interests in Europe and elsewhere. There is an impression that certain Western political figures did indeed take the end of the Cold War for a large-scale “defeat of the Slavic–Orthodox civilization.” They regard this end to push the world in the direction they want that would meet their own traditional values and their specific idea of the future. Hence the “dual standard” principle insistently applied in international relations. It presupposes different rules of the game for different states in different cultural and religious areas. This explains the desire to extend NATO to the “natural” frontiers of Western civilization, to turn it into a military-political basis-in absolute accord with the geopolitical practices of the nineteenth century (something of which Russia is accused). This also explains why highly ranked American figures repeatedly promise to discard the CIS to the smoldering ruins of history if Russia goes on with active protection of its interests in its relations with the newly independent states.
Not realizing the absurdity of his words American political scientist Strauss–Hupe writes that it is in the interests of the United States and mankind that the function of stabilizing and balancing control be concentrated in one center which will play the arbiter; in the interests of all this role should belong to the United States.
In 1997, a report with an ambitious title “The Strategy of US National Security in the Next Century” was published in the US. Its 50 pages are dotted with phrases “American global leadership” (about twenty times), American military superiority and the task of preserving it (about ten times) and countless assurances that the United States will promote its values across the world. The document says: Our military might is unequalled in the world; we can, and should, use the US leading role to channel the integration trends the world over in the desired direction, to correct present political and economic institutes and security structures, and to set up new organizations to create conditions conducive to promoting our interests and values. It says further that the United States intend to lead the world; the US Administration intends to translate into reality our world leadership in a way to present our best national values.
This ideological Messianism is a sort of providentialism; it is akin to that type of Protestant consciousness that departs from the New to the Old Testament. We all are eyewitnesses of new conflicts, new alienation among nations, and another stage of ideologization of international relations provoked by “the crusade for democracy,” the desire “to speed up the victory of the American democratic values across the world,” to impose on the world, that is home of varied civilizations, a kind of a Fourth Democratic International with an American face. The historic experience of the twentieth century says that ideological opposition develops into political and often leads to an armed conflict.
You should keep in mind that all attempts of reckless Westernization that damages national traditions and authentic development delivers a heavy blow at the Russian national identity and statehood. They promote more independence for regions and Russia’s disintegration. Primitive Westernization has already caused many troubles in Russia; if continued it is fraught with separation of more territories and nations which do not need Russia to move to the West. The Russian Eurasian project is in a danger of explosion—with pernicious results for the world.
The Imperial Syndrome
Demonization of Russia in the Western mind is not something totally new. It started long before Marquis de Custine. Ksenia Mialo, a Russian author, is right when she says that there is a certain pattern in Western perception of Russia: as soon as our country sheds a concrete image already demonized in the West, the latter creates another demonized myth. This happened to pre-Petrine Russia, then to Russia under Peter the Great. The Orthodox monarchy that had scared the West was replaced with Bolshevist Russia, the empire of evil, according to Western terminology. Today, the West feels threatened by anti-communist Russia which is no longer a superpower. Kissinger goes on calling it “the empire of evil” while Brzezinski is convinced that the new Russian menace will develop into fascism. He insists that the end of communism is no reason to relax: chaos and fascism are two Russian threats to the West. Russia’s reluctance to imitate the West or to bow to it is described as fascism. Huntington has issued an open warning: if the Russians, while no longer Marxists, do not embrace liberal democracy and behave like Russian, not Western, people, the relations between Russia and the West might become strained and hostile once more.
The Russian radical democrats have contributed a lot into such ideas of our country: they have no other terms for communism and the communists as “communist fascism” and “red-and-brown” crowd. They went as far as stating that the Great Patriotic War was a war among fascists of different hues.
Alexander Ianov, American political scientist, says the same in a diluted form. He sees Russia of the present day as a Weimar, that is, pre-fascist, country. Having lost the Cold War, says he, Russia has allegedly found itself in the same position as Germany in 1920 with an acute awareness of national humiliation and inferiority. He goes on to say that if not controlled by the democratic community the country will inevitably follow the path traveled by Germany in the twenties and thirties: from a revisionist power to “new imperialism” or even fascism. He calls on developing and applying in Russia an antifascist strategy of the West like this was done in defeated Germany in 1945.
A curious mess of facts and ideas, indeed! Russia of late twentieth century cannot be likened to Germany of the first half of the twentieth century; the fascist and communist doctrines are unjustifiably likened while the analogies between Russian and German awareness and Russian and German self-identification are purely artificial.
The situation in Russia in the nineties is different from what Germany experienced in the twenties, forties and fifties. Germany suffered two total defeats in two world wars; these were not military defeats but rather collapse of the statehood and the German spirit inflated out of proportion. The idea collapsed and national identity together with it. It was the time when an admission of party and ethnic affiliation was impossible. The triumph of national-socialism and the German spirit Hitler had proclaimed survived in an inverted form: the ideal of the German race of masters turned into a nightmare of the German race of criminals. To a great extent this was rooted in the real features of German consciousness. Germans themselves admitted that “the nation of poets and executioners,” of “Schiller and Auschwitz” was no contradiction but a sort of spiritual entity.
Obviously, the Germans accepted defeat and discredited national-socialism with a sigh of relief: an alien and oppressive force disappeared, the nation had to admit that it was deluded. This explains why 8 May in Germany is the Defeat Day not to be celebrated by true Germans. Until quite recently this was an officially approved attitude—today it still has many supporters. At the same time 8 May was the Day of Liberation of the German Nation that called for intellectual comprehension of the recent past to avoid its repetition. It was President Richard von Waitzekker who in his speech in Bundestag on 8 May, 1985 proclaimed this attitude. Back in 1970 Willy Brandt kneeled down in front of a monument in a Polish ghetto to express repentance, admit guilt, and regret about the past.
In Germany today it is impossible to be a nationalist and anti-Semite. Few pictures from the period of national-socialism shown at an exhibition (in a far-away corridor with ample negative commentaries) cause a storm of discussions.
Is there any similarity between Germany after national-socialism was defeated and Russia after communism lost its dominating position as an ideology and a social structure? Has the collapse of communism discredited Russian spirit in the way this happened to the German spirit after the ideology of national-socialism collapsed? Was national awareness in Russia blended with the dominant ideology?
For communism a class, rather than a nation, is a Messiah, therefore the class struggle of communism stands opposed to the social harmony of national-socialism. It is in this respect that the Russian and German national characters differ. National-socialism which was idealistic and yet absolutely oriented on material well-being (a small estate in Ukraine for everyone) went well with the German national turn of mind. Materialistic communism that aimed at abstract ideals (equality, justice, etc.) was accepted by Russian consciousness.
Any thoughtful observer knows that it was Russian consciousness that suffered most under the Bolsheviks—the echo of the blows can be still heard. This creates an opposition: the Soviet fatherland with its sins and the blameless Russian nation with a prospect of free and adequate self-identification in front of it. This relieves the nation of the necessity to push back and suppress the memories or to bear the burden of national guilt: there is an anonymous fatherland to shoulder all sins. The majority of the Russians do not regard the Soviet period as a “black hole” but rather as a logical stage in developing the national and the world spirit.
In Germany nearly all people (women and teenagers included) were fascists: it was the nation of fanatics. The Nazi regime was not separated from the Germans’ national identity—at that stage it was this identity that acquired some infernal form.
Things were different in Russia. Communist fanatics were few and far between even immediately after the revolution. During the late Soviet empire (in the seventies through to nineties) the communist idea itself was regarded as a joke. There were no confirmed communists even in the Politburo. At the height of the Stalin regime there were two spheres of everyday life: real enthusiasm and happiness of the common Soviet people and the ugly totalitarian regime and the personality cult. Obviously, in Germany the regime and the nation were a single whole; in the Soviet Union they were worlds apart. Stalinism was not an historical error committed by the Russian nation, or a sort of historical misunderstanding—it was a tragedy of the Russian nation which fell victim to it. Amoral and monstrous Stalinism was an alien phenomenon hostile to the Russian nature.
German soldiers invaded Russia convinced of Deutschland ueber Alles, of ethnic inferiority of the Jews, French, Poles, Czechs, Russians, etc. the fate of whom was concentration camps and gas chambers. They obeyed the orders like robots.
Russian soldiers were defending their homes and families, and the Motherland rather than the communist idea. They also obeyed orders given by other like-minded Russian people fighting for the same values, rather than by the regime. It was their personal war caused by the split between the individual and the regime, something that the German mind could not grasp. Consciously or subconsciously this was a war of protest against Stalin’s regime.
The real drama of that period took the form of a conflict between enthusiasm, collectivism, and romanticism, on the one hand, and slavish obedience, fear, and moral degradation, on the other. This was more than a social conflict—this was an internal conflict of all thinking persons in the Soviet Union. To some degree, this conflict inspired true masterpieces of literature, poetry, visual arts, and the cinema.
Could fascist Germany boast of something like that? No, the German genius created nothing but marches and entertaining films; it was completely mobilized by the Nazi military machine that pitilessly destroyed the best creations of the great German culture.
From the organizational point of view collapse of national-socialism has nothing in common with the communist retreat. Germany lost its statehood; the country was ruled by the four victor powers; the Germans regained control over a decade. The German statehood was restored first at the grass-root level gradually moving higher up. The Economic Council with limited powers was set up and, finally, in 1949, the Bundestag. West Germany recovered its complete sovereignty in 1949 having been totally integrated into the Western economic and political system. This long period of dependence produced positive results: the country had time to adjust to democracy under an outside control. Russia inherited many structures from the Soviet times.
The defeat of Germany, its capitulation and division of territory were registered in numerous legal documents of the highest level. The Nazi criminals were condemned by the International Tribunal. Fascism was condemned as a crime against humanity in many international legal documents.
Nothing like this happened when the Cold War ended. There are no documents of the early nineties that registered Russia’s defeat or capitulation be it the CFE Treaty, 2 + 4 agreements related to the conditions under which Germany was united or the 1990 Paris Charter. The contrary is true: these documents oblige all OSCE members to build up a United Europe without dividing lines based on equal partnership. From the legal point of view the Soviet territory within the 1975 boundaries confirmed by the Helsinki Final Act is a zone of Russia’s responsibility under international contracts and security. It inherited this military-strategic space from the Soviet Union by the force of legal assignment (recognized by all) on all treaties on nuclear and conventional arms disarmament valid on the territory. No state can afford armed forces of third countries in its military-strategic space; none will allow any parts of such space join hostile blocs and alliances.
No documents describe communist as a crime against humanity. There are communist parties in many countries where they are functioning and even winning elections in countries that call themselves democratic.
The Russians’ national sentiments are rooted in different soil. They are rooted in a bitter disappointment with Western policies: the West has failed to appreciate the sacrifices of the Russian nation in the name of discontinued confrontation. The Western countries actually employed Russia’s temporary weakness to promote their own interests. The West never went as far as another Marshall plan (which extended to the defeated Germany); it buried the plans of creating Larger Europe and the common European Home, it interpreted the Paris Charter as Russia’s geopolitical capitulation and did not allow it in its key military-political and economic organizations. Instead, it took up a trump card of “geopolitical pluralism,” is preventing political and economic integration of post-Soviet space and encouraging new national leaders to move away from Moscow. Naturally enough, all this, and the NATO eastward expansion are regarded in Russia as perfidy and betrayal.
It should be noted that it was possible to wipe Nazism away due to speedy economic recovery and good prospects for the future. The Marshall Plan relied to active economic measures as a weighty argument in favor of the West. National Socialism was defeated politically and discredited ideologically; it was buried both from the administrative and economic points of view. Everybody knows well that nothing of the kind happened to communism. In Russia revived communist ideology is as natural as the revived national identity. The West should recognize that its own short-sighted and self-centered policy, as well as the failures of economic reforms in Russia, brought the country to the brink of communist revenge in 1995–1996.
This policy should be revised, the West should recognize Russia’s lawful national interests, promote in every way the democratic changes there and extend to Russia massive economic aid. Russia should be allowed to integrate into the key political and economic institutes as an equal partner, not a “poor relation”. These are mere outlines of anticommunist, or antifascist, Western strategies in respect to Russia at the present stage of its, and world, development.
Is Russia Still a Great Power?
This status is constantly in doubt in Russia and the West. Economic indices, Russia’s share in the world income, its per capita GDP, the dynamics of its economic growth, its share in world trade, structure of foreign economic ties, etc. are the main arguments.
Indeed, today Russia is trailing behind all world industrial leaders. Between 1990 and 1995 agricultural production shrank by about 40 percent; machine building, by 70 percent. Russia is behind the major power centers according to many other key indicators. It is responsible for about 2 percent of world economic production, 2.5 percent of population, 4 percent of defense spending, and 6 percent of total numerical strength of the armed forces. Russia is on the 46th place in the world where the per capita GDP is concerned, and is far behind the developed countries.
The present-day economic trends do not allow it to join the world’s “golden ten” of the first quarter of the twenty-first century (China, USA, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, FRG, Thailand, France, and Brazil). Russia’s GDP volume, the main economic index, is 10 times smaller than that of the US, 5 times than that of China, 2 times than those of Germany and India. Russia has found itself among the second dozen of the world’s states. This allows certain political scientists in the West to call on their governments “to stand no ceremony with Russia” and pursue their policy with no account for it.
These are short-sighted views that do not correspond to the world political realities. Indeed, it was Russia that joined G7, rather than Brazil, Indonesia, India or China. Russia has great political weight and a huge economic potential.
There is another major objective circumstance. Despite the Soviet Union’s collapse Russia, one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, is a politically important and influential power. Its geopolitical situation and nuclear potential keep Russia among the great powers; its status is also supported by its demographic, resources and high-tech potentials. Russia is a vast country, with a large economic, demographic, and intellectual potential, raw material and mineral resources—this is its claim to being one of the major world centers.
We know that such positions are not obtained as a matter of fact. Russia is in danger of loosing all this if it fails to climb out of the economic, scientific and technological, and spiritual crisis. Successful social and economic reforms will allow the country to raise the standard of living at home and extend its influence outside its frontiers.
There are prerequisites for this. On the whole, Russia’s population is educated enough. The share of skilled workers and specialists is very high. It is equally important that throughout the eighties and nineties the ratio between Russian GDP and that of other countries has not changed. In other words, Russia is still the country at the industrial and partly scientific-industrial development stage. Some elements of post-industrial society have been created in the Soviet (Russian) military-industrial complex. Russia’s productive forces differ greatly from those of developing countries and show no fundamental differences from those in the West. Russia enjoys the same type of qualifications, the same class of machines and mechanisms. Different production relations that dominated the country for a long time prevented it from reaching the level of Western productivity.
The above describes Russia as a power with temporal large-scale economic problems caused by the altered economic and geopolitical situation. Preservation of the internal resources and their mobilization preserve for Russia the prospect of revived economy and a switch to democratic development and breakthrough in major fields. Positive changes the world over create a favorable context for Russia. If and when new social relations are firmly established in Russia there will be new work morals, the devastating results of the transitory period will be eliminated. Russia will be able to reach the highest world standards or even surpass them. If the CIS develops into a real economic organism there will be a possibility to recreate the economic potential of the Soviet Union. This cannot be reached overnight yet the present situation should not be dramatized. Time and again history confirmed that a loss of the great power status does not deprive the country of good prospects for economic and social advance.
Russia today is able to ensure its national security and development. It is one thing to compete with the United States for world domination. It is quite a different thing to ensure the country’s national security. The latter requires less money and effort—and ensures Russia’s continued physical existence.
When asked whether Russia should claim the great power status we should answer: “Yes.” It will be no superpower of the past which competed with the United States on an equal basis, it will be the country with an equal role of its own among the five leaders of the world. This is a natural and objective process outside alien influences or wishes.
What Are National Interests?
Regrettably the interest in the new Russia in the West is still negative. That part of the international community has formed a more or less clear idea of what Russia should not be—yet there are no constructive ideas or opinions about what Russia should be once it recovers its national identity.
The West alone is not to blame—after all, our place and role in world politics cannot be defined outside Russia. Obviously, the new Russia should clearly formulate its national interests and the limits to which it is prepared to go in its concessions to the West.
It was in 1993 that independent Russian experts realized that the Russian diplomacy should abandon ridiculous hopes of a complete harmony between the interests of Russia and those of the developed part of the world; Russia should have proclaimed its national foreign political interests. The period of “bashful silence” and blind imitation of the West lasted long enough to make the West worry. Russia’s official foreign political course recovered only in the late 1995 when Ye. Primakov was appointed Foreign Minister. His first step was to clearly formulate the country’s foreign political priorities. In 1998 the foreign policy concept was put into the following words: “protection, in the broad sense and along the wide front, of Russia’s state and national interests through a diversified and active foreign policy which should not degenerate into confrontation.”
The 1996–1998 turn was of signal importance both for Russia and the rest of the world. The relationships with other countries have acquired the stability of a more predictable foreign policy. The old truth was reconfirmed once more: viable partnership realized as a fruitful and equal cooperation with the West on a wide range of fundamental political issues rests on the clearly identified and formulated national interests.
Two Russian academics, A. Galkin and Yu. Krasin proceed from the historical experience when they write that the national interests are a sum-total of interests and requirements shared by the sociocultural community. Their satisfaction and protection are a sine qua non of the community’s continued existence and identity as a subject of history. The national interests reflect the ethnic entity’s requirement to obtain the place in the world community corresponding, to the highest degree, to its cultural, historical, and spiritual traditions that will allow it to realize its potential as fully as possible.
There is a genetic tie between the national interests and its ethnic foundation. They are formed on the ethnic basis but are neither reduced to this foundation nor are determined by it. Determination belongs to the sociocultural factor. Its role is increasing as society develops while the ethnic factor recedes to the background. Today, the ethnic factor has no significant role to play in determining the national interests of the contemporary developed societies. They are ethnically mixed and, therefore, attach no political importance to ethnic affiliation; it, in its turn, does not affect the individual’s civil situation and, consequently, the way the national interests are interpreted.
In Russia the situation is much more complicated. As distinct from the developed countries with ethnically neutral nations being the sum-total of all citizens there is no integral social-political organism in this country. The ethnic factor is still important and manifests itself in what the state is doing and the positions of the regional elites, especially in the areas populated by compact ethnic groups. Russia’s national interests are not ethnically neutral.
They were formed on a heterogeneous ethnic basis as a synthesized manifestation of the requirements and interests of numerous ethnoces living on the vast Eurasian territory, at one and the same time a barrier and a bridge between Europe and Asia.
Historically, Russia was taking shape as a political, economic, and administrative union of lands, ethnoces, and cultures tied together by common state values and interests. Within Russia they were not competitors—they cooperated for the sake of Russia’s predestination and served the channels of its spiritual ties with the world. None of the national groups within the state neither dominated nor was subjugated. It should be added that the empire was an anti-Russian rather than a pro-Russian state: the Russian nation was the main pillar of the empire and the main material of its strengthening and expansion. The Russian autocrats and dictators never wavered if political or military aims demanded huge sacrifices from the Russians. They guided themselves by a simple consideration that “many more people will be born.”
The country’s vast and ethnically patchy expanses demanded considerable efforts for their development in the complex geographical and geopolitical conditions. This predetermined the national interest as an all-round strengthening of the state (which was an organizing principle) to ensure territorial integrity and security, and to create adequate forms of coexistence of varied ethnic, religious, and cultural communities. This explains why the national interests shaped in the course of history turned out to be the interests of the state. Peter the Great who created the Russian Empire described service to the Fatherland as the highest life symbol for each of his subjects. The state interests in Russia were always high above private and social interests thus predetermining Russia’s “imperial” nature.
Today Russia should be composed but firm when defending its national interests in the world while avoiding conflicts with any state or alliances of states. It should strive to coordinate its national security with the systems of the regional and international security in the multipolar world that is coming into being.
Russia’s national interests are an imperative of its social development and the basis on which the strategy of its domestic and foreign policy rests. They are an integrated expression of the vital interests of the individual, the society, and the state. The constitution and other major documents placed the private interests, the interests of man, higher than the others. In the past, these interests were regarded as a “material” for history and for all sorts of social utopias. Today, our many national objectives for the immediate and distant future are sustained growth of the standard of living and welfare of the citizens of Russia and their families ensured by adherence to the human rights and freedoms, and economic advance. This goal should be supported by the might of the Russian state.
Today, the national interests of Russia in the foreign political context can be divided into three categories.
The major national interest on the global scale is Russia’s active and equal involvement into building such system of international relations in which its place will be adequate to its political, economic, and intellectual potential, military-political and foreign economic potentials and requirements.
At the regional level its major national interests are limited to a stable and secure international environment and promotion and strengthening its military-political and economic positions on the world arena through the mechanisms of regional cooperation.
Russia’s major interests in the post-Soviet space can be described as all-round and mutually advantageous ties with the CIS countries and involvement into their integration on the common basis.
Some politicians of the former Soviet Union expected that the end of global confrontation between two superpowers and collapse of the bipolar world would diffuse national interests in the interests shared by mankind. This did not happen: on the contrary, the traditional narrow understanding of the national interests or even national egoism came to the fore. Further democratization of the world community will probably not put an end to national interests: they will extend, imbibe new descriptions of world politics, and acquire new content that takes account of the interests of other countries and the world community as a whole. If and when an international civic society takes shape it will create conditions for a new democratic international order to ensure democratic principles of relationships of all elements and parts of the world community. This will raise the national interest to the level of planetary interests. This will not happen soon.
A. Galkin and Yu. Krasin are quite right when they say that the new approaches to the national interests and national security take root while the old ones are still applicable or even dominating. There are many cases when the “mine-alien” opposition is preserved or even dominates while the new ideas of national security from the point of view of the world’s integrity and mutual dependence are being developed. The old approaches cannot be simply discarded—they should be gradually overcome by rationalizing their content and making it more humane; they should be purified of the ideas that the interests of people are subordinate to a general abstraction, and they should be drawn closer to the hopes and strivings of an individual.
So far the noble ideas of merging the national-state entities into united mankind, of their unification into a civilized cooperation of all nations and states are far from reality. The national interests and national security should not be sacrificed to the developing democratization of the world order and to the prospect of the world without great powers. First, even if merged into a single community mankind will probably be not idyllic and free of ethnic and interstate conflicts. Second, the road to this goal is long and full of pitfalls. Those who rashly brush aside the national interests risk to fall into them. Today, the national interests are no less important than in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and they will retain their significance for a long time to come. This makes the national interest the basic political category of all countries without exception. It is wrong or even dangerous to ignore this.
Has Geopolitics Receded into the Past?
Today, the national interests of Russia and of other large states are of geostrategic, geoeconomic and, naturally, geopolitical importance.
I would like to dwell in some detail on the geopolitical aspect of Russia’s policy: in the West our country’s claims are interpreted as attempts to revive its “imperial” policy. This is nothing else but an attempt to stick another political label on Russia. In actual fact geopolitics is one of the few stable concepts in the contemporary world and the foundation for the ideas on national interests and security.
How can this approach be opposed? Either with ideological or moral and emotional factor and a naive belief that “the nations will put aside their quarrels and unite into a single family.” History has told us that this belief holds no water. Five years of foreign policy a la Andrei Kozyrev testified once again that the states that prefer moral categories when dealing with the world are defeated and become dependent on stronger powers. The belief that in the world of power politics good relations between states are formed through mutual friendships of their leaders or nations is a grave error of which certain politicians are guilty and an indication of their dilettantism. Intoxicated with power a politician may ignore geopolitical realities—yet they will never ignore policy. They will take revenge on those who brushed them aside.
One of the major rules of geopolitics is the idea of the geographic space as not simply a territory or an attribute of state power—it itself is political power. True, the world telecommunication system that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, new transportation means, information technologies, economic and financial form of interaction have decreased to a great extent the importance of geographical space. Yet it has retained its relevance and remain one of the parameters of the great power status in world politics.
The Soviet Union (Greater Russia) covering one-sixth of the world was doomed to a global role in world politics. Having lost nearly half of its population, over two-thirds of its GNP, and a large part of its territory the Russian Federation cannot claim global national interests as the United States do. Yet some of its national interest are still of global nature. Its regional interests, in the post-Soviet space in the first place and the zone of its traditional presence are growing in importance. There are many new tasks there to be solved—otherwise Russia risks permanent isolation in the world geopolitical and, more important, geoeconomic space. This will deprive it for a long time, if not for ever, of its great power positions.
The country’s position is equally important for geopolitics. For example, its location inside Central Eurasia is very important for Russia. This makes it an axis area of world politics. This makes it possible for Russia to perform its geopolitical mission, that of a creator of balance between East and West in their cultural-civilizational rather than bloc hypostasis. This role is confirmed by Russia’s cultural tradition that united three world religions: Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. World history has confirmed many times that when Russia was strong and influential in Europe and Asia, and in the world, regional and global situations stabilized themselves. When Russia weakened under the impact of domestic or foreign factors the world lost its balance, state egoisms revived and smoldering ethnic and religious conflicts and contradictions flared up.
This is what we are witnessing today when Greater Russia collapsed. States are vying their egoistic interests in their desire to divide Russia’s “heritage.” This may provoke a landslide of geopolitical changes that may escape our control. The changes will not stop at the Russian frontiers or those of neighboring states. The chain reaction may embrace the earth. Territorial recarving of the world, its resources, and strategic boundaries may shake the world not allowing the United States, the only superpower to control this global challenge.
The geopolitical situation in Europe is obviously unfavorable for Russia. Collapse of the Soviet Union and its withdrawal from Eastern Europe detached Russia from the rest of the continent: the Baltic countries now separate Russia from Scandinavia and Poland, Ukraine, from South–Eastern Europe. In their turn the East European countries have developed into an economic filter for potential Western investments. They are a political barrier that prevents Russia from integrating into the European structures. Byelorussia is the only remaining more or less reliable geopolitical bridge between Russia and Europe. Asia is full of direct challenges to Russia’s security. Islamic extremism shows no signs of subsiding—it is mounting. Russia is facing a real danger in the South created by extremist regimes of the Middle and Near East.
This formulates our country’s geopolitical role as containment of the Eurasian South in the broadest sense. What is more, Russia can gain authority in Europe only as an obviously strong Asian and Pacific power. By the same token, its strong traditional European policy will allow Russia to maintain its prestige in the relationships with its main Asian partners: China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia.
And finally, one of the major instruments preventing Europe and the world from sliding down to a geopolitical chaos is Russia’s preserved traditional geopolitical role as a world civilizational and power “equalizer.” To achieve this Russia should preserve its territorial integrity—otherwise it will be bogged down in chaos. This is why the main industrialized countries of Europe and Asia, and the United States should regard Russia’s territorial integrity and its revival as a strong state as their vital interest. They need a Russia capable of joint influential European and Asian policy. Those of the Western politicians that are pursuing dangerous aims of destroying the Eurasian geostrategic monolith and reducing Russia to an inferior power in Europe and Asia play with fire.
Everybody knows that in the early nineties the leaders of the former Soviet Union tried to interest the world in a novel concept of a polar-less world based on general harmony and cooperation. They were promoting the ideas of a “varied but interdependent world,” “the world without nuclear weapons and violence,” simultaneous disbandment of the military-political blocs, and put forward a program of liquidating nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction by 2000. Our country was actively promoting the program of a “common European home,” the conception of a “comprehensive system of international security” based on “renovated” United Nations. Western politicians paid lip service to the initiatives yet refrained from contributing to a “polar-less” geopolitical model of the world. Some time later it became clear that the international relations were moving towards a multipolar and policentric picture of the world.
Despite an obvious skepticism of the West that never retracted from protecting its national interests, in 1991–1995 new Russia continued the line of the “later Soviet Union.” Under no pressure it beat an unprecedented geopolitical retreat deluded by a false belief that a new “non-imperial” Russia would immediately find its way into the Euro–Atlantic community of the West leaving behind its former geopolitical boundaries: Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine, Moldavia, and Byelorussia. Russia’s new leaders never associated the course on active cooperation with the West with defeats or victories. It was believed that the downfall of the communist regime even at the expense of the Soviet Union’s continued existence created unprecedentedly favorable conditions for partnership with the West.
Meanwhile the West regarded these intentions as Russia’s obvious weakness and its admission of the defeat in the Cold War. This was how the idea of “new containment” of Russia came into being. NATO’s eastward expansion is one of its manifestations. The new thinking that Gorbachev had proclaimed ran across our new partners and opponents’ rigid pragmatism who hastened to secure Russia’s concessions in the form of geopolitical acquisitions. Having disbanded the USSR (that is, Greater Russia) under no pressure from the outside the Russian Federation cut short the continuity of geopolitical interests of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire. In the eyes of the world this deprived Russia’s claims to an influence outside its frontiers and to zones of vital interests of any legitimacy. Meanwhile, they were natural for a state that publicly claimed the great power status. No wonder, the Foreign Ministry’s statements that came too late, in 1993–1994, about the CIS territory being the zone of Russia’s vital interests were qualified as imperial ambitions. Contrary to promises to integrate Russia into a “civilized community of democratic states” it was unceremoniously pushed away from seashores and other vitally important geopolitical frontiers. Indeed, it was a pragmatic answer from the Western states to Russia. After all, it had abandoned the idea of historical continuity and, hence, the historical and post-war foundations of its foreign policy and the traditional spheres of influence and had come forward with the conception of a “united world” based on “general humane values.”
In this way the nineties have reconfirmed the relevance of the old geopolitical truths. They have reconfirmed another lesson of the long and bloody history of international relations: if strength of one geopolitical subject is not balanced with the strength of other subjects the entire system collapses and slides towards chaos, conflicts, and wars.
We know that Huntington’s conception does not accept this lesson: he believes that “as the new world order will be formed civilizational affiliation will replace the traditional considerations of maintaining the balance of forces as the main cooperation principle.” He hastened to drop the idea of the balance of forces in geopolitics: he wants to believe that the West will preserve for ever its priorities in international relations. This is a dangerous trend. Today, like a century ago, international security does not hinge on one power’s domination even if accompanied by declarations about defense of democracy and freedom. The main thing is balanced cooperation of the major geopolitical subjects.
On the Russian Nation Issue
The Russians are the main state-forming ethnos shouldering the historical mission of preserving Russian civilization. Russia’s further existence depends on the continued existence of the Russians, their spiritual and moral principles and the gene fund. If the Russian nation disappears the country will fall apart into a large number of national-state formations of all sizes on the vast Eurasian space. This may result in ethnic and regional conflicts, in the fight for resources and land. But not only this: all frontiers will be revised amid bloodshed and another recarving of the world will begin. Without the Russian nation no imperium is possible, nor any civilized organized existence in Eurasia and across the world.
There are at least three definitions of the nation: by its territory, ethnic affiliation, or culture (ideology) described by the words all-Russian, Russian, Russian-speaking. All three definitions were applied to the Russian nation at different times. Before the 1917 revolution “Orthodox” was perceived as a rough synonym of Russian; Lenin’s theory and practice eliminated the ethnic component from the definition of the nation. No wonder, these three definitions are sometimes confused or substitute each other.
If the Russian nation is defined by its ethnic affiliation then Russia is an ethnic state (the Russian state) which makes nearly 20 percent of its population (mainly Muslims) who are not ethnic Russians second-rate citizens. At the same time if the ethnic principle is applied to the people outside the Russian boundaries living on the former Soviet territory which Moscow pledged to protect then their number will be limited by the ethnic Russians (or about 25 million according to the 1989 census.)
On the other hand, if determined by its territory or culture than Russia is a political state (the state of Russia). This makes all the citizens more or less equal; it becomes clear whom Moscow pledged to protect in the former Soviet republic though their number is much greater that 25 million of ethnic Russians. At least all those living in the former Soviet Union are potentially Russians; this is reflected in the law on Russian citizenship of February 1992 which allowed all citizens of the former Soviet Union to adopt Russian citizenship. We should also bear in mind that by the Constitution of Russia the country’s population is multinational. In an indirect way this identifies the concepts of “nation” and “ethnos.”
Naturally enough, this also confuses things: there is a general federal nation and smaller nations with varied statuses. The citizens of Russia represent two nations: that of Russia and ethnic groups. However, not all citizens enjoy the latter privilege. In the West and in Russia there are many politicians who apply the tern “nation” only to those ethnic groups that are fighting for sovereignty.
Even when the term “Russian nation” is used the nation itself is regarded as amorphous as compared with others. There is no Russian nation—this is clear. Otherwise an explanation of how it came into being and which ethnic communities composed it are needed. From the West European point of view the Russians are not a nation (or a very specific nation) because its super-ethnic nature is not opposed to ethnicity in general. The Russians are a nation in a different meaning.
Russia is a specific state: its statehood was not only repeatedly destroyed by wars and revolutions but also subjected to transformations as the project Empire was being realized. Probably this does not allow the national process to mold into the nation-state West European style.
The ethnic roots of the Russian nation can be traced back to their beginning which cannot be said of the European or American nations where mixing involved many ethnic groups, cut short their civilizational advance, and formed a political entity. In Russia we have an imperial ethno-nation that preserved the archetypes of Old Rus. The Russian nation-forming core united the community of ethnoses into an ethno-nation, the vehicle of a great civilizational tradition that differs from the minor ethnic (ethnographic, every-day, etc.) traditions.
When talking of the Russian nation politicians concentrate on ethnic relations thus provoking claims of the minor non-Russian ethnic groups to an independent historical role and creating a problem of their coexistence with Russians. The problem is quite the opposite: do Russians want to live side by side with these ethnoses? Polls have demonstrated that Russians treat differently refugees of various ethnic groups. In the majority they do not want to accept into their social environment people from the Caucasus and Transcaucasus after the tragedies in Baku, Karabakh, Abkhazia, Ossetia, and Chechnya.
The Slavic cultural and historical unity of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine is a different matter. Ethnically, these peoples are parts of the Russian (Great Russian) superethnos, culturally, they are parts of Russian culture (being themselves subcultures).
The Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union, were probably wider than the territory inhabited of the Great Russian superethnos. Yet the present Russian territory is much smaller than the sphere of influence and life activity of the Great Russian superethnos. Today it is divided into several amorphous (Russian-non-Russian) states the leaders of which spare no effort to retain power, nationalist ideology being one of their weapons. The aim and a natural cultural-historical process is reinstitution of Russia within the boundaries of the superethnos.
Here it is in place to quote Father Sergii Bulgakov: “Even those states that include many tribes and ethnic groups are the result of state-building activity of one nation which was, in this sense, dominating. One can go to all lengths to recognize the political equality of peoples yet this will not make them historically equal within one state. In this sense Russia will remain a Russian state no matter how many ethnic groups are within it even if the widest possible national equality is introduced.”
The Russians do not need to restore their national identity in any special way: it is always present on the archetypal level. The educated groups of people, the Russian nomenklature and the Russian intellectuals are facing the problem of national self-awareness and of their identity with the Russian nation: so far they do not fit the natural ideas and the cultural program inherent in the Russian people. Ethnic equality they are defending does not envisage the Russian nature of Russia and is even opposed to the Russian national identity which remains “imperial.”
Some of them count on Russian nationalism and the Russian Republic—and this is dangerous. The results will be tragic for all, Russians included. By the moment of a possible outburst of Russian nationalism the neighboring countries and some of the “sovereign republics” in Russia will have been already integrated into the system of international relations. Variants of all sorts of blocs and confederations of the Baltic–Black Sea Union type are discussed: this is not chance developments. The haste with which NATO is expanding eastward is prompted by a fear of the Russians’ movement for reunification. The leaders of the neighboring countries are not afraid of Russian imperialism: they fear the irredenta that may become real. It will be supported at the grass-root level even contrary to the wishes of the leaders of Russia. Everybody is aware of the strange situation in which the Russians in the CIS countries have found themselves and of the contradictory nature of Russia’s national-state structure. In the nearest future the Russians outside Russia have no chance of assimilating themselves with alien ethnic environments—hence the hectic measures to protect themselves against the Russians who, at a certain stage of their struggle, may realize that their future depends solely on their ability of organize themselves in the struggle for their rights. This movement will unite all who associate stability and security with common historical past, common culture, centuries of living in a unified state. In this case the ethno-nationalists prepared to go to all lengths to contain the popular movement to unification will fail. One of the examples is the Serbs fighting in former Yugoslavia. This movement will bring forward its own leaders. This will be a movement for the consolidation of a nation realized as the Russian nation.
Obviously, this course of events may take on different forms, including armed struggle. In the new Russia at best this will bring a long period of international isolation, a war being the worst variant. Irrespective of its outcome, the results for the neighbors and the former autonomies will be appalling. They will pay for their unwillingness to abandon the dogma of ethnic self-determination, for the short-sighted policy of those who wish to strengthen their positions on “their” territories by driving Russians out, for those who under the guise of international law are pursuing derussification, for those who are trying to erase the past and the memory of the common state.
Naturally enough, these development are mere possibility. There are still means to consolidate the nation-state on the political basis: transfer to territorial federalism even if the republics with their symbols are preserved; unified laws across the entire territory; actual, not merely declared, equality of the citizens of Russia (not of Tataria or Bashkiria); uncontested Russia’s sovereignty in foreign policy.
This variant will be inevitably imperial in the sense that with greater autonomy of the regions it can rest only on the consolidated strong state with rigid horizontal federal power.
Russian Imperium
Russia has never been an empire in the West European sense. Its history is a history of the country that developed new territories and a history of the state that was striving to control the inherently spontaneous process of their monastery and peasant colonization. Russia proper has neither been more affluent than the colonies nor boasted a developed third estate, nor an actively developing social infrastructure boosted by federal investments. At all times the Russian statehood fixed the country’s civilizational rather than national-ethnic identity. In the course of history the Russian people had acquired its integrational role which was later invariably preserved. The Russians have been always the center of ethnic and cultural attractions for the Slavs and other neighbors. As distinct from the Western nations the Russian people never developed into a dominating nation and never learned to rule others. In the geopolitical, ethnic, and cultural-civilzational aspects the Russian people belonged to the state of Russia to a greater extent than to their ethnic affiliation. This did not allow it to become a nation in the Western sense, that is, a nation-state. In the West there was an imperial nation (the parent nation) while in Russia there was the Russian meta-nation; where there was Western colonialism and imperialism in Russia there was the Russian imperium (the super-national, spiritually centrist state with a voluntary alliance of peoples.)
Before the revolution “imperial frame of mind” was always interpreted as a system of values in which priority belonged to quests of a certain common way (the way to God for the believers). The Russian Empire differed radically from the unitarian state of the Bolsheviks. In the same way the imperial frame of mind differed radically from Bolshevist consciousness, the way of thinking of the party nomenklatura. To preserve its power it never hesitated to sacrifice its own people or to set one of its parts against another. While the Soviet Union was collapsing the peoples tried to escape not the Russian Empire but the Red Empire of the Bolsheviks. Today, too, smaller Russian ethnoses are trying to escape the regime that inherited from the Soviet Union Bolshevist rather than imperial way of thinking. The war in Chechnya is an ample example of this.
The imperial idea today is an idea of a political union of Russia’s multiethnic population in new historical forms. The state of Russia has been and remains multinational. All attempts to fit the problem of Russia’s security within the pattern of the purely national statehood are not adequate to its historical traditions and realities. The history of the state of Russia is a history of a political alliance of its multinational population. It cannot be reduced to purely legal institutes and mechanisms of state power. The Russians are not a quasination. They are a meta-nation, something this is much more important, subtle and significant for the world than a nation.
There is still a possibility of creating in Russia a nation of Russia as a community of all ethnoses living on its territory. This will not be an entity of the “Soviet people” type but rather a community and national awareness of peoples in which the feeling of belonging to a single state is of primary importance for the state’s preservation and development. The road towards a genuinely equal alliance of all peoples of Russia has nothing to do with their individual statehoods. The road lies through a constitutional admission of the fact that all the parts are multinational, through real equality for all ethnic groups in all spheres of life, on all levels across the country. This will defuse contests over territories’ national affiliation.
One should realize that Soviet Union’s collapse was not caused by any national-liberation movement: it was a direct result of the collapse of the transnational Soviet political elite that had degraded by 1991. The center failed to control it. The elite put stakes on nationalism, independence and political distancing from Moscow in order to preserve itself, retain power and get Western credits. There were no deep-cutting reasons for the Soviet Union to disintegrate: there is hope that little by little the post-Soviet space will reintegrate.
It proved impossible to identify mononational regions. The attempts at creating statehoods in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, partly in Kazakhstan, and other regions of the former Greater Russia result in mini-empires. The negative imperial traits stand out in greater relief if the daughter empires are radically removed from the mother empire and if they prove be spiteful and petty-minded. This is quite natural: the daughter empires are ill suited to balanced, independent, and self-contained existence. In Russia ethnic nationalism stands opposed to the imperial frame of mind. It fights for the living space—none of the West European states is as monoethnic as Russia in which 85 percent of population are Russians. “The demons of post-Soviet nationalism” brought to life by Greater Russia’s collapse provoke this turn of events by trying to entrench on their territory through pushing Russia aside, the policy of de-Russification, discrediting the past, and killing the memories of living in one single state. They seem to be unaware that by finally destroying Russia they themselves will perish under its debris.
Aggressive rebirth of the totalitarian empire of the Bolshevist type in the wake of the country’s rapid disintegration is the most dangerous possibility. There is a historical precedence: 1918–1922, the period of “war communism.” The fact that for the first time in its history Russia does not feel itself endangered by its environment makes this variant less than possible. Yet if the West goes on with the course of geopolitical pluralism and move it from the post-Soviet space on the territory of Russia and if some of the countries of near abroad go on with their anti-Russian policy that variant cannot be excluded.
The Russian Way
Historically Russia always recovered its national identity in the field of supra-national and meta-historical paradigm. Today, the paradigm should be supra-national and meta-historical as well.
In this connection it would be interesting to look at the periodization of history offered by G. Kvasha. He based it on periods 144-year long (shorter periods do not allow any state to address tasks of historic importance). The period is divided into four 36-year-long stretches. The first is a period of planning and energy accumulation. The second is straining of all forces that strengthens the state and creates a strong leader—Peter the Great or Stalin (evolutionary spurt). The third is a period of completion and summing up, the realm of bureaucracy and stagnation; the fourth brings respite. “This is the golden time when the state lets the nation to go free. Nothing awful can happen: the second and third periods have inculcated discipline and abeyance to order. The people relieved from the pressure of the state become free and brimming with creative energy. The cities are embellished with palaces, the fields are full of fruit. This is the time when latent transfer to the first phase of the next period starts, and energy is being accumulated.”
The 144-year-long cycles in Russia Kvasha describes as “imperial spurts.” “The first cycle described as an imperial development type started in 909 (when the Russian statehood appeared, Kievan Rus). The second began in 1353 (fall of the Tatar yoke, the Moscow Principality). The third began in 1653 (the Petrine Russia), the fourth, in 1881. It will come to an end in 2025.”
Here is how the Petrine cycle is divided into 36-year-long stretches: 1653–1689–1725–1761–1797. Here is how the present cycle is divided: 1881–1917–1953–1989–2025 (the dividing lines are obvious). The main thing about the cycle is that the country cannot withdraw from it before it is completed. having entered the fourth imperial spurt over one hundred years ago Russia will have to live through it till the end. Before that “there will be neither democracy, nor the market, nor law-governed existence in the country. There will be the rule of force and the will of the most active but by far most numerous part of the population, the rule of law of state necessity rather than well-being of the nation.”
By the end of the “golden period” society ascends the third evolutionary stage of guaranteed welfare with no paupers and homeless. Social life allows everyone to be maximally involved into the system of social administration and its improvement. According to Kvasha, this is the end of the statehood.
The idea that the state will die away is not new: Marx and Nietzsche wrote about this in their time. Russian writer D. Andreyev cannot imagine the future ethically religious brotherhood of mankind outside this idea. The transfer from the third evolutionary stage to the fourth which society living at the stage of perfectly organized welfare cannot escape will inevitably alter priorities, values, and methods. The society of the fourth evolutionary stage is living according to the laws of love for the world and cooperation with it rather than according to the laws of domination over it.
If the coming century is indeed the time of final disappearance of the state as a form of social organisms Russia has all chances to lead the process. This means that a Russian transformed into a man of the world will be able to preserve his tongue and culture having created a fundamentally new form of sovereignty. Russia will start living in the third millennium as a meta-national corporation. It will have no state or any other borders; the world will be open to it in the same way as it will be open to the world. Quantum mechanics says that each and every photon fills in the entire Universe. It goes without saying the Central Russian Plain will remain for a long time to come, or forever, the heart of compact and predominantly Russian population. This should not be taken to mean that foreigners will not be able to penetrate the purely Russian milieu and take root there. Russian isles and archipelagos not infringing on sovereignty of others will flourish across the world which will become universal Russian diaspora.
If I risk here to look ahead, into a short historical perspective I shall say that the variant acceptable to the world is a gradual transformation of the post-Soviet space into an economically and politically integrated alliance of democratic states (“United States” of Eurasia). It should be able to guarantee political and economic stability and serve an intercivilizational “melting pot.” This place will be a natural historical spot for Greater Russia on the new geopolitical map of the world. If the process of self-identification of the newly independent states goes in this direction then the historical battle of the peoples of Russia for a worthy place in the world will be crowned with victory. This can happen only if national self-awareness (imperial and not hostile to other states and nations) revives and its integrity restores. The objective and long-term interest of the Russian elite, Russia’s closest neighbors, all responsible states and political figures consists in promoting this processes rather than sticking the label of “imperialism” (in its aggressive meaning) on the first feeble shoots.
Endnotes
*: Sergei Kortunov is a professor of the Academy of Military Sciences and a candidate of historical sciences. Back.