Russia (52 page)

The changing mood also helped Moscow in Central Asia. Although the United States had been able to penetrate the region, it now needed Russian help in its global campaign to keep militant Islam and terrorism at bay. Russia was well equipped to help. It was experienced in fighting terrorists. It also had better intelligence on the Islamic world, and many more experts in its languages and cultures. And it retained influential friends in the former Central Asian republics and Afghanistan.

Under Putin, Russia was developing relations in Asia that promised to stand it in good stead. Its arms exports to India and China were buoyant, it was respected in the Middle East, and the unpopularity of the American-led invasion of Iraq presented it with worldwide opportunities.

Putin’s progress was no less deliberate abroad than at home. In the opinion
of
at least one Western international-relations expert, he rapidly succeeded in revolutionizing Russia’s position in the world. Displaying a clear sense of strategic realities and steadiness in the pursuit of his priorities, Putin was quick to appreciate opportunities and skilful in exploiting them. Unlike Yeltsin, he was concerned with realities, not gestures. He made it clear that, even in its reduced state, Russia had teeth, and its ability to cut off gas or oil supplies to a near neighbour or to withdraw from the agreement on limiting conventional forces in Europe could indeed be effective negotiating points. He made a realistic but advantageous accommodation with NATO, changed a forced retreat in the face of America’s power into a strategic partnership with the USA against the forces of terrorism, and transformed defeat over strategic disarmament into ‘the spearhead of Russia’s global resurgence’.
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The springboard for any resurgence depends on the economy, and Russia’s has been growing steadily at a rate of 6 per cent a year. Though it is overly dependent on commodities, it is likely to meet Putin’s stated aim of doubling GDP by 2011. The budget shows a surplus, the national debt is shrinking, and unemployment is relatively low. Much ground remains to be made up, but analysts suggest that the recovery is likely to continue. The fact that the Russians are recovering from the collapse of their fourth empire is not to suggest that they will create a fifth. But nor can the prospect be entirely written off. To make an informed assessment of its chances, however, they must be reviewed in relation to both the current world situation and the historical record.

T
HE RUSSIANS CREATED
four empires, each of a different kind, and each of the four collapsed for different reasons. The first was a trading empire based on co-operation between indigenous Russians and Varangian adventurers which developed into an association of city states governed by a grand prince. Though heavily influenced by Christian Byzantium and in awe of it, the rulers of Kievan Rus had imperial ambitions of their own, and held sway over a multi-ethnic, multilingual population, Finno-Ugrian and Turkic as well as Slavonic. This first Russian empire collapsed in the face of the invading Mongols, but also because the breakdown of its succession system made it easier prey than it might otherwise have been.

The origins of the second empire lay in the continuation of the northward migratory trend prompted by global warming described in Chapter I. The Mongol invasion intensified the trend, and in due course the originally spontaneous movement of population came to be organized and directed by the monasteries in conjunction with the Grand Prince. The ascendancy of Moscow owed much to its strategic, and profitable, position in Russia’s river system, to its ruler’s role as chief intermediary between the Russians and their Tatar overlords, and to his success in persuading the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to move his base from Kiev to Moscow. Expanding into the forests of the north and east, which were rich in valuable furs, it grew wealthy through trade with the west and the south, and its rulers were eventually able to claim pre-eminence as grand princes of all Russia and shake off what remained of Mongol domination.

Muscovy’s progress towards imperial status, claiming heritance from the later Roman Empire, was facilitated by the centralizing efforts of the grand princes of Vladimir-Moscow, who held sway over what was by then the most prosperous part of Russia. Their strategy of creating one very populous commercial centre, Moscow, in that underpopulated country, even at the expense of other cities, aided the process. So did a growing sentiment among the Russian elite that one strong state was preferable to several weak principalities. St Sergius’s father was only one of many princely servitors
who transferred his allegiance to Moscow in the period. Later, Ivan Ill’s marriage to the niece of the last Byzantine emperor seemed to set the seal on the imperial claim, and it was this Ivan, not Ivan IV, who established the principle of hereditary autocracy.
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This empire later collapsed, partly because Ivan IV had dissipated its strength with his incessant wars and domestic upheavals, and partly because of the untimely death of his immediate successor, the last of his line, but chiefly because of a sharp and unpredictable change of climate. The upshot was a series of disastrous harvests, epidemics and migrations, widespread starvation and consequent social troubles. Their combination deprived the incumbent Tsar Boris of legitimacy, despite all his conscientious efforts. As this second empire crumbled, Poland and Sweden enlarged their empires at Russia’s expense, although Ivan’s biggest acquisition, Siberia, remained firmly in Russian hands.

The Romanov Empire, established in 1613, was a more conventional, dynastic, entity. It survived for three centuries, during which time it expanded its territory significantly - not only in Europe and Central Asia, but in the Far East too. This was a more difficult task for a land-based empire than for its latter-day rivals Britain, France or even Germany, which had easier access to the sea. Yet all these empires continued to expand until they encountered rivals and limits were imposed by agreement or by force. Only the United States succeeded in creating an imperial space for itself on the two continents of the western hemisphere without the need to expand territorially and to control alien populations directly. It also secured immense markets for itself, trade, preferably exclusive, having always been an imperial goal.

But though Russia was not so advantaged, the Romanovs made impressive enough gains, extending their territory into central Europe and the Balkans, across the Caucasus, and to the heights of Central Asia. This empire too fell eventually, partly because its autocratic ruler, Nicholas II, was incompetent, but also because its economy had developed relatively late in comparison with its rivals’ and was insufficiently industrialized to sustain participation in a modern total war. The same might be said of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, both of which collapsed soon afterwards, along with their supporter, Imperial Germany. The First World War also impoverished France and Britain, ending their prospects of maintaining imperial status far into the future. But events were to show that ruined Russia was not done yet.

The Soviet regime which built Russia’s fourth empire noted the lessons of its predecessor’s failure. This new emergent empire was more deeply
ideological than any of its predecessors, and therefore better equipped to build a great sphere of influence. It was based on the novel principle of a centrally planned economy and followed the practices of a wartime economy The organizational core of the state hierarchy was supplemented however by an efficient Party organization that was ramified into every town, village, enterprise and professional organization. Like the modernizing precedents of Ivan IV and Peter I, the revolution presided over by Stalin was immensely costly in human life and happiness. But it worked in terms of world power. The economy was transformed, a powerful military machine was constructed, its enemies were defeated, and an empire created which was more extensive than any of its predecessors. Moreover, in addition to extensive territorial gains, the Soviet regime also ran an informal empire, the Communist Bloc, which embraced the Balkans, east-central Europe and half of Germany as well as Mongolia and Cuba; and it exerted immense influence in the world beyond through the Communist Party, and among many non-aligned countries both as a nuclear superpower and as a model of how to escape the toils of economic backwardness.

It eventually fell partly because the burdens of empire became too expensive to maintain; partly because the planned economy, which had helped to make the Soviet system so successful, eventually proved insufficiently supple to accommodate the new technology; and partly because its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, under pressure to provide ever greater social benefits and beset by misfortune, made unnecessary mistakes. He promoted galloping inflation by default, and realized too late that the bureaucratic and Party hierarchies played essential roles in co-ordinating the system and ensuring that central policies were implemented. Once regional administrators were invited to make their own decisions without reference to Moscow, the system collapsed into chaos. The collapse was both hastened and exploited by nationalist politicians who inherited the ruins of the once mighty state. Russia itself was reduced in Europe and the Caucasus to the frontiers of c. 1600, and in Asia to those of the mid eighteenth century. Under Boris Yeltsin (1992—9) Russia’s remaining strengths continued to flow away. The state weakened, its authority eroded and Russia’s voice in the world faded.

Russia has been reduced territorially. In Europe it is contained by NATO;
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in Asia it is contained albeit rather less securely by China and the local allies of the United States. But though Russia is no longer a superpower, it remains formidable in terms of nuclear power as well as conventional forces,
and continues to occupy the vast region of northern Eurasia which makes it virtually impregnable. Invading Swedish, French and German armies, all of them rated superior to the Russian army of their time, have advanced far into the interior, but to their own destruction. No power today is likely to contemplate another attempt. Russia is most vulnerable strategically in sparsely populated eastern Siberia - to peaceful infiltration by the burgeoning Chinese population. Indeed, Russia generally has become demo-graphically weak. Nevertheless, though its empires have gone, Russia and Russians remain. To assess their prospects we need to consider their historical experience as well as current indicators and developments.

The natural conditions with which they have always had to contend have had a profound effect on them. The harshness of the climate has made them hardy and enduring; the immensity of their landscape and the low density of settlement, as well as the brevity of the growing season, have encouraged both co-operation and coercion in social relationships, for Russians have needed a greater degree of organization than most peoples in order to survive and prosper. In the past this need has favoured centralized, authoritarian forms of government and discouraged more participatory forms.

Whether or not Montesquieu’s judgement that very large countries need authoritarian government still holds in the technologically advanced twenty-first century, recent attempts to graft Western institutions and managerial methods on to the Russian polity and economy have proved disappointing. This is partly because their proponents have failed to take sufficient account of Russian conditions and the traditions deriving from them. They have applied theoretical solutions to a country and a people they did not understand sufficiently well. Outsiders from a different habitat with different historical experience should not expect prescriptions which work in the worlds they know to succeed anywhere else even if they have the help of a few enthusiastic helpers in the country concerned. The attempt to impose a Western form of liberal democracy on Russia in conditions
of
economic and social collapse merely had the effect of making liberal democrats unelectable. Democracy may best suit comparatively rich countries, but if that is the case what are the prospects of an economic recovery which might provide more fertile ground for it?

After Yeltsin they were distinctly unpromising. In Putin’s first five years of office, however, the annual growth rate was in the region of 8 per cent a year, thanks largely, though by no means completely, to burgeoning oil revenues. If such a rate were to be maintained, GNP might well double within a decade. Since Yeltsin’s departure progress has been made to bring order to the disorderly state of affairs that was his legacy. The ruble has been
stabilized, and Russia’s credit ratings have risen; corrupt localism has been restricted, social conditions have improved, and the new regime has committed itself to the rule of law. But problems remain. The media are not as free as they were, the limits of centralization have yet to be established, and the as yet unresolved Khodarkovskii case has raised doubts about the relationship between government and big business, between the state and the forces of free enterprise. Though often presented as incompatible, these are in fact complementary. Russia needs investment capital which only the world market can provide; but companies need to operate within a legal framework which only the state can maintain. If an accommodation between them is reached, the economic recovery should continue. If not, Russia will face unpleasant alternatives: either a return of the over-mighty state or untrammelled corporate greed.

In the long term, Russia’s economic power is contingent on the extent of its market and the size of its population. Perhaps the most serious consequence of the collapse was demographic weakness. Russia’s population continued to fall for more than ten successive years at the end of the last century. The climbing death rate of the Yeltsin years eventually eased off, but the birth rate failed to recover. According to the preliminary results
of
the 2002 census, the population in October of that year was 145.2 million — almost 2 million fewer than in 1989.
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And there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative problem. Russia has been suffering from a ‘brain drain’. Many able young Russian scientists and economists, entrepreneurs and engineers who might otherwise have contributed to the new Russia now live and work in the West.

Not since the first Time of Troubles, at the beginning of the 1600s, have Russia’s fortunes been so low. Yet its recovery then was amazingly rapid, and it was soon on the expansionist path again. What, then, of Russia’s prospects now?

Emerging from their second Time of Troubles, the Russians themselves have been less interested in empire than in political stability, economic regeneration and the elimination of social distress. Putin has understood this. In his address to the country on 26 May 2004 he stated his priorities: ‘A stable democracy and developed civil society … the strengthening of Russia’s international positions. But … [above all] substantial growth in the well-being of our citizens.’
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The social objectives at least may soon be attained. Even if they are not, Russia’s status as a major power, though not as a superpower, will be maintained.

In the opinion of a Western analyst, the idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union implied the end of Russia’s great-power status is mistaken. All that happened was that ‘One of the world’s undisputed great powers temporarily subordinated its foreign and domestic policies to the West’s capricious preferences. This state of affairs was never likely to last long.’
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Russia is still the only power that stretches right across the land mass of Eurasia, and it is vital to the stability of every country situated there.
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The prospects of building an empire of the dimensions
of
its last two predecessors lie far beyond its present reach, of course. Nevertheless the Russians still possess a number of advantages that could lead to their building a new sphere of influence, and even territorial enlargement, in the more distant future.

One obvious advantage Russia has over most countries in the modern world is its large reserves of every kind of strategic commodity from diamonds to natural gas, and from aluminium to uranium. Another lies in the superior quality of its educational system, which is geared to detect special talents in young children and develop them in special schools. Despite the brain drain, Russia will not lack for learning and expertise to exploit its material advantages, and with its tradition of careful planning it should make the best of them. However, a strong state cannot be based on a shrinking or static population and until now, as we have seen, Russia’s demographic situation has been very weak indeed. Only in 2003, for the first time since the collapse, did Russia’s birth rate rise, and then only very slightly
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If this should mark the beginning of an upward demographic trend, however, the prospects for longer-term revival will be strengthened. Furthermore, Russia’s strategic position has been improving fast of late, thanks partly to circumstances, partly to Moscow’s adroit exploitation of them.