Putin's Wars (10 page)

Sorokin mentioned the Paris Commune and the October Revolution of 1917 as examples
of such economic revolutions. It is clear that the Russian Revolution of 1991, that
put an end to communism with its planned economy and, after an absence of more than
seventy years, reintroduced a market economy, was not a purely political revolution,
but equally an
economic
revolution and consequently as deep and fundamental in impact and scope as the October
Revolution of 1917 that it, finally, buried.

But revolutions are
dialectical
processes. They carry, as a rule, their negation—the
counterrevolution—
in their womb. After the first period of revolutionary fervor follows a second period
in which the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. Sorokin described this process
as follows:

Everyone knows the refrain “It was the fault of Rousseau and Voltaire,” sung in the
second period of the French Revolution, when the ideologies of the first phase were
giving way to those of Chateaubriand, J. de Maistre, de Bonald, and others. The story
repeated itself in the Russian revolution [of October 1917]. In the first period bourgeois
science, philosophy, Pushkin, Tschaikovsky and other representatives of the “degenerate
aristocracy” and the “bourgeoisie” were assailed. Religion, the emperors and the great
military generals of the past, the family, marriage, and sexual chastity were likewise
attacked. In the second period, the Revolution banned the Marxian texts of history,
restored the family, praised sexual chastity, and elevated Pushkin and Tschaikovsky
to even higher positions than they had before. It idealized the great Russian Czars,
the famous generals, and even the religious leaders of the past. It exalted patriotism,
“Our Soviet Fatherland.” . . . Soviet Russia resumed exactly the same foreign policy
as that of the Czarist regime.
^[25]

According to Sorokin, “ideologies of the second stage represent a revival of the living
ideologies of the prerevolutionary society in new dress and colors. The revolution
itself, when successful, inherently and necessarily consumes its earlier ideologies
and resurrects the living prerevolutionary ideologies. This explains why in practically
all great revolutions the ideologies of the first phase turned out to be unpopular
in the second.”
^[26]
This process may explain why in present-day Russia the capitalist liberalism of
Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys,” which guided the reforms of the early 1990s, has
fallen into disgrace, together with the protagonists of the perestroika period. Not
only of its leaders: Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but also of the liberal reform ministers,
such as Yegor Gaidar and Andrey Kozyrev, who are now accused of being responsible
for the economic breakdown and the loss of empire. Putin is clearly the representative
of Russia’s “restoration” after the chaotic transformation years. It was Putin who
called the loss of empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth
century.” Although he does not want to restore communism, he is the man who exalts
in the second phase what had been destroyed in the first: a centralized, strong state,
a positive assessment of Stalin’s “geopolitical genius,” a leading role for the secret
services, and the eternal glory of the Russian empire.

A second factor that played a role in Russia’s reemerging nationalism and nostalgia
for the lost empire is the
deliberate use
of chauvinist and nationalist propaganda by the leadership. Putin was not only the
providential man, welcomed as the leader who would “restore order” in the second cycle
of Russia’s anti-communist revolution, he was also a lucky man, because of the huge
rise in export prices of oil and gas that coincided with his first two presidencies.
It led the Russian population to ascribe its newfound wealth and prosperity not to
blind market forces, but to their active president, who, while not deserving their
praise, was quite eager to accept it. His popularity helped him spread the nationalist
message. Stalin was rehabilitated as the
vozhd
(leader), the genial brain behind the victory in the Great Patriotic War. His massacres,
purges, executions, and genocides were reduced to historical details, necessary to
modernize a backward country, or—even better—they were forgotten and banned from public
debate. The archives of the KGB, which had been temporarily opened, were closed again.
The great autocratic and imperialist tsars, especially Peter the Great, Catherine
the Great, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were rehabilitated and reestablished in
their full glory. In September 2000 tsar Nicholas II was canonized and became an official
Orthodox saint. This official revival of old imperial pomp and glory coincided with
an increasingly aggressive behavior vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics.

The deliberate nationalist propaganda employed by the new power elite of
siloviki
who—like the
nomenklatura
in old Soviet days—once again ruled both the state and the economy, served another
goal:
to create foreign and internal enemies
in the good, old Stalinist tradition. The regime needed
vragi naroda
(enemies of the people) to absorb the aggression that was building up in a society
where there exists no independent judiciary, where democratic freedoms have become
a farce, political parties are created by the Kremlin, elections are stolen, the police
is not considered as a security force but as a threat by the population, and journalists
and human rights activists are regularly murdered. Nationalism is a well-known
Ventil—
a safety valve—for oppressed populations. This policy of the Russian power elite to
deliberately
foster nationalism and to propagate fear has been analyzed by the Russian sociologist
Lilia Shevtsova, who wrote that “the regime is deliberately trying to keep the minds
of the public in a schizophrenic state, obstructing the formation of a civic culture
and legal mentality. If the demand for a ‘special path’ and an ‘iron hand’ strengthens
in Russia, it will not be because of the inability of Russians to live in a democratic
and free society, but because they have been deliberately disoriented and trapped
by fears, phobias, and insecurity intentionally provoked by the ruling elite.”
^[27]
By propagating nationalism and stirring up xenophobia—not only against foreigners,
but also against Russia’s Muslim minorities, who are often indiscriminately depicted
as “terrorists,” the leadership is trying to unite the people under what Hayek has
called a
negative program.

It seems to be almost a law of human nature, that it is easier for people to agree
on a negative programme, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off,
than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they,” the common
fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any
creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently
always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved
allegiance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great advantage of
leaving them greater freedom of action than almost any positive programme.
^[28]

This officially propagated nationalism with its xenophobia and enemy stereotypes (Chechen
terrorists, NATO, investigative journalists, democratic opposition, NGOs, and human
rights activists) is not only meant to bind the people in an unconditional way to
the “negative program” of the regime (its positive program is still today largely
kept secret from the Russian population—and possibly also from the regime itself).
It also has another, second, function, which is to legitimate the
suppression of democratic rights.
This mechanism is described by Ulrich Beck as follows:

In all previously existing democracies, there have been two types of authority: one
coming from the people and the other coming from the
enemy.
Enemy stereotypes empower. Enemy stereotypes have the highest conflict priority. They
make it possible to cover up and force together all the other social antitheses. One
could say that enemy stereotypes constitute an alternative energy source for consensus,
a raw material becoming scarce with the development of modernity.
They grant exemption from democracy by its own consent
.
^[29]

Apart from these two aspects, mentioned above—binding the people to the regime and
suppressing democracy—the propagation of nationalism by an autocratic leadership serves
yet another goal. Because nationalist fervor can be used in two ways: first, as an
instrument for its
internal policy
, and second, as an instrument for its
foreign policy
. In the first case nationalism and xenophobia are used to meet objectives of domestic
policy: to divert the attention of the people from the real problems in the country,
to knit them together behind the regime and to repress democracy and/or to stifle
demands for (more) democracy. In the second case nationalism and xenophobia, while
still serving the first function, additionally promote a
revisionist and neoimperialist
foreign policy agenda that aims to change the international status quo. The key question
is, therefore, is Russia’s new nationalism of the first kind or of the second kind?
Yegor Gaidar had dark forebodings, when he wrote:

It is not difficult to exploit that pain [of the loss of empire] politically. Say
a few words that make the point that “we were stabbed in the back,” “it’s all the
fault of foreigners who have misappropriated our wealth,” or “now we will take their
property and live well again,” and the deed is done. You do not have to make up the
phrases; read any textbook on Nazi propaganda. Success is guaranteed. Such populist
tactics appealing to social pain are a political nuclear weapon. They are rarely used.
Those who do exploit them end up tragically as a rule. Such leaders bring their countries
to catastrophe. Unfortunately, for the past few years Pandora’s box has been left
open in Russia. The appeals to post-imperial nostalgia, nationalistic xenophobia,
the usual anti-Americanism, and even to a not quite habitual anti-Europeanism have
become fashionable and might soon become the norm. It is important to realize how
dangerous this is for the country and the world.
^[30]

The present regime is very secretive about its long-term foreign policy goals and
keeps its cards close to its chest. But there are many disconcerting signals. Russia
is playing a dangerous “Great Game” in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, destabilizing
its neighborhood and trying to reestablish itself as the dominant power. After the
Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the subsequent dismemberment of this small
neighboring country, an acceleration of measures and actions could be observed that—taken
together—were rather disconcerting. These actions began with the combined massive
Zapad
(West) 2009 and
Osen
(Fall) 2009 maneuvers in August and September 2009 in which up to thirty thousand
troops participated. For these maneuvers Khadafi’s son was invited, but not Western
observers (OSCE rules for the invitation of observers were circumvented by simply
dividing the maneuver into two smaller parts). The
Zapad
maneuver ended in September 2009 in the Kaliningrad oblast with a simulated tactical
nuclear attack on Poland—an action that led to protests from the Polish government.
Moreover, Russia’s nuclear doctrine was changed, to allow the preventive use of tactical
nuclear weapons in local wars—even against nonnuclear states, which is a flagrant
breach of the Nonproliferation Treaty. On August 10, 2009, a law was signed by Medvedev,
permitting the use of Russian troops in foreign countries “to protect citizens of
the Russian Federation.” These measures seemed to be meant as a legal preparation
for eventual armed interventions in Russia’s Near Abroad and were interpreted as a
growing Russian bellicosity, experienced as a threat by its neighboring states. According
to the French geopolitician Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier, “the Russians seem to be seriously
convinced that in the end the empire will always return to where it [once] reigned.”
^[31]
The existence of the Russian empire is, indeed, for many Russians so self-evident,
that it is almost a law of nature, a necessity hidden in
la nature des choses.
The problem is that this is not self-evident for the formerly colonized peoples, who—at
last—have gained or regained their national independence. A reconstitution of the
former empire on a new basis will, therefore, necessitate a huge, prolonged, and concentrated
effort by the Russian leadership, an effort involving making use of all the means
the Russian state has at its disposal: from economic investments and economic cooperation
to economic boycotts, from pipeline diplomacy to energy blackmail, from using its
“soft power” to diplomatic pressure and corruption of local political elites, from
charm offensives to provocative actions and military threats.

However, this new Russian imperialism needs an ideological justification. What kind
of justification can the Russian leadership give to their neoimperial ambitions? It
is clear that it can no longer invoke a specific mission, as in the case of the Soviet
Union, which was considered as the global vanguard of the working classes. Nor can
it rely on theories of the white man’s burden, which have definitively been discredited.
Furthermore “spreading democracy” and the defense of human rights cannot be used as
an argument. The democratic credentials of Russia are not much better than those of
Belarus. What we are seeing rather are elements of the old
Pan Slavism
when the Kremlin calls the Ukrainians or the Belarusians “brother peoples” who should
not remain separated from the “mother country” Russia. But the old Pan Slavism was
meant to liberate Slav peoples from a foreign yoke. Today Belarus and Ukraine are
sovereign countries and are in no need of being liberated. The new Russian Pan Slavism
vis-à-vis Belarus and Ukraine has, therefore, rather the character of an annexationist
Pan-
Russianism
. (This finds, by the way, support in the name Russians use for Ukraine:
Malaya Rossiya
—Little Russia.) Do Russia’s imperial ambitions stop there? Or do they equally include
Moldova, Kazakhstan, the South Caucasus, and the Central Asian republics?