Russian identity: is there an alternative to great-power status? - 3

In the first part of her interview (see “Russian Identity: Is There an Alternative to Great-Power Status?” in No. 46 of August 20, 2015), Irina Pavlova told The Day about her vision of the nature of Putin’s regime, its “Stalinist” roots, and the role of historical science in the struggle for Russian awareness. This part deals with the prospects of social transformations inside Russia, the likely role of Ukraine in this, and the reasons why the global community cannot understand the essence of the Kremlin’s power.

“WE ARE DEALING WITH A POSTMODERNIST TYPE OF DICTATORSHIP WHICH WE MUST LEARN TO ANALYZE”

Why do you think the vast majority of those who consider themselves Russian civic oppositionists and seem to disagree with the official policy are not prepared to drop great-power status as one of the components of their life philosophy? Is Russian identity possible at all without great-power status?

“Because great-power status is a very tempting idea, and very few managed to resist this temptation. Even Pushkin, admittedly the ideal of a free person in Russia, welcomed the suppression of the 1830-31 Polish uprising. In the 1920s-1930s, many White Army officers and intellectuals, who had previously fought against Soviet power, accepted the latter, for they viewed it as renaissance of Russian statehood. They eventually saw Russian statehood in the shape of Stalin’s great-power policies. Nikolai Ustryalov even came back to Russia to watch its new golden age, only to pay for this with his own life in 1937.

“For this reason, the authorities instigated debates on the ‘national idea’ and the revival of ‘Russia’s past grandeur and status of a great power’ in the mid-1990s. And how Russian society was thrilled by the spectacular gesture of the then Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov who ordered his airplane’s pilots to U-turn over the Atlantic in protest against the Western policy towards the former Yugoslavia!

“Is Russian identity possible without great-power ambitions? In theory only. In this case, immediately after August 1991, when the public gave the central government carte blanche for reform, it was just the right time to begin to consistently implement the idea of a federation. But who could do this, consistently at that? It is obvious today that, on the contrary, the government did enormous damage to the very idea of federalism in 1991. Instead of clearly delimiting the powers of the center and the regions, the Kremlin took a vague stand and began to compete in ambitions with the local authorities, which resulted in the Chechnya war and consolidation of the autocratic institution of presidency.

“The federalist principle of Russia’s national and governmental system does not at all mean disintegration of the country. On the contrary, this principle means that there is a strong center to which the regions delegate powers to represent their interests on the international arena and to set the main goals of the country’s development. This principle of government would have immediately changed the occupation-type nature of Russian statehood. A system of government, which calls for the regions’ independence and voluntary unification for addressing the common problems, seems to be the most suitable one for countries with such a huge territory as Russia. When the people become masters of their country or region, not just a subdued populace, the notion ‘great power’ will acquire an altogether different meaning, namely, the grandeur of a country instead of the boundless power of the ruling top, but the latter still remains an unresolved problem. This ruling top will never agree to lose its power.”

The Russian authorities have launched a new variety of propaganda in the past few years. Instead of “the party’s general line,” the Russian media offer the audience dozens of improbable interpretations of many high-profile events in the country and abroad. Society is thus being taught to disbelieve anybody. How effective do you think this tactic is? Is it possible to resist it?

“It is very effective, which we have said above. I will also add that, choosing a Stalinist model of development, this regime has really mastered, in a virtuoso manner, the art of the ‘clash of opinions,’ every time getting the upper hand in the eyes of the vast majority of the population. Moreover, it has learned to channel the discontent of its subjects by means of the oppositional media and the Internet. Allowing curses against itself (the most illustrious example here is the Moscow Echo radio station and its million-strong audience of disgruntled ‘men in the street’), the Kremlin has achieved the utmost devaluation of a free word. The word has always had a great deal of clout in Russia. In the Soviet era, it was sought, tuned in to, and listened to – people read samizdat and foreign publications avidly. Today, it means nothing. A cunning and cynical policy of the ‘pluralism of opinions’ in Russian publications has utterly disoriented people not only in the assessment of the current situation in the country and abroad and of their historical past, but also in ethic principles. Incidentally, articles on a speedy collapse of the regime are also a drug of sorts for people discontented with the regime.

“But how to resist? Experts should study this, calling a spade a spade and being aware that it is not just an ‘authoritarian regime in transition to a totalitarian one’ but a postmodernist type of dictatorship, which we should learn to analyze. But everyone should also learn to be free. The Russian reality shows at every step how important for the country’s destiny and how difficult this task is.”

Long before the Russian aggression against Ukraine, you wrote the Kremlin was trying to become a gravity center for anti-Western forces. Today, the Russian leadership is more overtly intending to form sort of an anti-Western, or, rather, anti-US front in Europe. Those being drawn into it are more or less marginal but often, oddly enough, ideologically opposite forces. For what purpose do you think this is being done? Is the Kremlin really trying to become sort of an alternative to the West? Is this possible, taking into account that, unlike the USSR, present-day Russia has no all-embracing positive ideological program (for “particular spirituality” of the Russian people can hardly be considered as such)? Or are the attempts to broaden its influence abroad just a way to hold power inside the country?

“Indeed, the Kremlin is trying to become an alternative to the West. It does have an ideology – the aforesaid great-power status. And it is trying – not only in words, but also in deeds – to be a gravity center for anti-Western forces and not to be, in the words of Gleb Pavlovsky, ‘a shred of Euro-Atlantism.’ The unconditional ideal of Russia’s current rulers is a superpower patterned on the Soviet Union which had ‘a might comparable with that of the other superpower,’ the US.

“Neither the country nor the world were willing to notice until recently that the Russian leadership had long been speaking to the West in a language of confrontation. It was seriously hoped that Russia ‘was heading, slowly but steadily, for progress’ and that, by integrating Russia into Western international institutions, the West ‘was thus civilizing it.’ Yet some influential forces in the country could not put up with the collapse of the Soviet Union and have long been toying with the idea of a global-scale revanche. It is no accident that, from the mid-1990s onwards, Aleksandr Dugin ‘systematized’ these visions of the world in his lectures on geopolitics to General Staff Academy students, Sergey Kurginyan consulted various top-level officials, and Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, evinced interest in Andrei Parshev’s book Why Russia Is Not America.

“Here is, for example, the way the pro-Kremlin journalist Maksim Shevchenko instructed United Russia’s young activists in 2009: ‘Russia is not the West and must not be part of it. Russia must become a gathering point for all antifascist, and hence anti-Western, forces of present-day humankind. It is not without reason that such beautiful freedom-seeking countries and peoples, like those in Latin America and Africa, are reaching out for us.’

“It would be wrong to say that these facts remained unnoticed – on the contrary, there are a lot of serious publications on this subject. But neither Russian television nor journalists were exactly eager to interview these researchers.”

“THERE ARE FUNDAMENTAL REASONS WHY THE WEST SUPERFICIALLY KNOWS RUSSIAN HISTORY AND PRESENT DAY”

You insist in your publications that, since the early 20th century, the West has tended to understand events in Russia rather superficially and has been unwilling to see the danger that it represented. For example, in the 1930s the West in fact ignored the manmade famine organized by the Kremlin leadership in Ukraine. Do you think the point is only in the effective work of the Kremlin’s agents of influence or there are some more fundamental reasons why these interpretations are popular in the West? Do you think the West has radically changed, in a way, its attitude to Russia after its aggression against Ukraine?

“Undoubtedly, there are some fundamental reasons why the West superficially knows Russian history and present day. It is, first of all, the Left ideas which are traditionally widespread among Western intellectuals who teach at universities, work as advisors to presidents and governments – in other words, they shape public opinion in their countries. In the 1970s, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG Archipelago somewhat softened their radicalism for some time. Even before that, books on Soviet prison camps and repressions had been published in the West, but they went either unnoticed or simply ignored. The situation began to change after the 20th CPSU Congress, at which Nikita Khrushchev made a report on Stalin’s crimes, and particularly after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops in 1968. Only then The GULAG Archipelago was translated and read, and certain conclusions were drawn.

“Yet they were born and raised in the conditions of democracy and an open society and, hence, they apply the same yardstick to Russia, studying visible processes only and being unable to see and analyze what lies behind them and to deconstruct erroneous or bogus phenomena. This is why the collapse of the Soviet Union was unexpected to most of them. They considered tough criticism of Russia until recently as a ‘cold war syndrome,’ preferring to believe the official press and listen to pro-Kremlin commentators who they thought had some exclusive information at their disposal.

“Even today, the West underestimates seriousness of the situation. Suffice to read, for example, Stanford University Professor Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia. After the annexation of Crimea, he was surprised why it was necessary to reject the progress made in the past 20 years, when, in his view, Russia was moving towards prosperity and respect.

“I have often written about Western historians who research the Stalinist period. After being given access to Soviet archival documents, they believed what was written there and, hence, fell into the thrall of erroneous interpretations and assessments. As a result, following the spirit and the letter of a document, they paradoxically found themselves on the side of Stalinist authorities. They write about democracy (without quotation marks) in 1937, about the masses that ‘pressured’ the authorities, about a scared Stalin who was forced to resort to repressions in response to chaos, mismanagement, and crime. They consider him an outstanding political and military figure and a talented organizer, thus helping instill in Russia the concept of Stalinist modernization as the greatest event in Russian history and of Stalin as its efficient manager.

“Therefore, we must say there is a comprehensive and deep crisis in the understanding of what is going on in Russia.”

“RUSSIA’S MOST CLOSELY-GUARDED STATE SECRET IS THE TRUE ROLE OF STALIN IN THE UNLEASHING OF WORLD WAR TWO”

In your words, Western countries must bring the Kremlin to reason by means of a certain peaceful solution (otherwise, Putin may use nuclear weapons). What strategy do you think will be effective in this case?

“Taking into account that the most closely-guarded state secret of the Soviet Union and Russia as its legal successor is the true role of Stalin in the unleashing of World War Two, an adequate strategic response of the West might be a new Nuremberg tribunal that would complement the decisions of the 1945-46 trials. All the more so today, when Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has said that it is necessary to establish an international military tribunal about nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and that ‘crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations.’ The Kremlin and its propagandists should be deprived of the possibility to always appeal to the 1945-46 Nuremberg trial, thus trying to put an end to the claims that it was a tendentious trial due to circumstances of that time, when judges and prosecutors were representatives of the winning, not neutral, states. The Soviet Union insisted then that only Nazi Germany be condemned and punished and, given the compliance and cowardice of the allies, thwarted even the most timid attempts to show the provocative role of Stalin in the unleashing of war in Europe. In the continuation of that Stalinist policy, any today’s attempts to consider the USSR’s true role at the beginning of World War Two are also interpreted as an encroachment on ‘our Victory.’

“This is why we need Nuremberg Tribunal II, a new impartial trial over those guilty of unleashing that war. The publication of a series of crucial documents in the late 1980s and early 1990s disclosed a lot of new details of the policy that led to that war, which could lay the factual background for a new trial. Nuremberg Tribunal II must handle all the issues that Stalin ordered to suppress 70 years ago. Special emphasis should be put on the provocative speech Stalin made on August 19, 1939, to his inner circle. And, finally, the defeated side should also be given the floor in order to receive an answer to the questions put to the Soviet government by Germany’s foreign ministry in the note of June 21, 1941.

“The Russian government must be denied, once and for all, the temptation to base its policies on human ignorance, lies, and disinformation. Only Nuremberg Tribunal II could bring to reason the Russian rulers who have gone too far and are still applying Stalinist methods of provocations in their foreign policy.

“But this is, of course, hypothetical reasoning, for the current Western leaders are not prepared for this step.”

“MOSCOW’S RULE WAS OCCUPATIONAL NOT ONLY IN UKRAINE, BUT ALSO IN RUSSIA”

Do you think Russia’s geographical particularities, including the size of its territory, have an impact on the nature of its social system? Is a democratic and rule-of-law Russia possible within its present-day borders?

“This is rather a widespread viewpoint – influence of territory on the nature of Russian government. Here is, for example, the opinion of a French Slavicist, Georges Nivat, who is, incidentally, rector of Moscow State University’s International Center in Geneva: ‘For a country that is still unprepared for local self-government owing to its boundlessness, the magic potion will be a mixture in the proportion two thirds of authoritarianism and one third of democracy.’ Today’s Russian Federation is a unitary state, in spite of the word ‘federation’ in its name, which means nothing but a supranational system of government, subordination of all territories, regions, and autonomous entities to Moscow’s direct rule, and total enslavement of subjects. However, I find it difficult to give an optimistic answer to the second question. As I have already said, this is possible in theory, and federation is the first step towards a democratic and rule-of-law Russia. But, practically, I don’t think it is possible today. The past few years have seen a sharp rise not only in the criminalization of the authorities, but also in the degradation of society, which may eventually result in chaos and destruction rather than in a democratic and rule-of-law Russia.”

Ukraine has become lately a refuge for many Russian activists, liberal journalists, at al. There were even attempts to hold sort of a forum of the Russian opposition in Kyiv. In the 18th century, Ukrainian scholars and educators (Feofan Prokopovych and others) made a major contribution to the formation of a modern Russian state. Speaking of a more ancient history, it is Kyivites who founded Moscow and other Russian cities. Do you think Ukraine is in some way responsible for the state of affairs in Russia? Can (and, if so, in what way) Ukraine influence social transformations inside Russia, including its democratization?

“No, Ukraine was not, is not, and cannot be in any way responsible for the state of affairs in Russia. Both republics, Ukrainian and Russian, that were part of the USSR which was, like today’s Russia, a unitary and supranational entity, equally suffered from the policy of Moscow’s supreme leadership. Essentially, that government was occupational not only in Ukraine, but also in Russia. Forcible collectivization was carried out throughout the USSR’s territory, and the 1932-33 famine reaped its ‘harvest of sorrow’ not only in Ukraine, but also in Russia proper, the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan.

“But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the two republics became independent states, Russia and Ukraine began to drift apart. Russia declared itself legal successor to the USSR, inheriting not only the mechanism of Stalinist rule, but also the Soviet foreign policy. Conversely, Ukraine had been in a state of uncertainty for almost 25 years and only recently made a European choice. However, to become a democratic rule-of-law state, Ukraine must carry out radical reforms as soon as possible, above all, in the economy, in order to lay the groundwork for democratic procedures and institutions and to instill law and law-abidance in society. It is a very difficult road. Corruption control alone is insufficient here. Only after these reforms, we will be able to hope that the ways of Ukraine and Russia have parted forever. I sincerely wish Ukrainians success on this path. Only then could Ukraine be a role model for and have some impact on Russia.”