A historical split

The anniversaries of both Maidans is an occasion to take up the topic of a historical split between Russia and Ukraine, which exclusively resulted (I stress there was no equal responsibility) from Russia’s totalitarian choice. Political scientists and historians are now considering an alternative model of the two states’ relationship based on cooperation and mutual respect. It is a necessary and instructive project, but, to be realistic, this model must proceed from a fundamentally different domestic setup of Russia. Therefore, another “what it could be if” should regard “if” as not a different person at the head of Russia but a totally different populace that made a deliberate choice more than 10 years ago.

I will repeat what I have said more than once on The Day’s pages. Still underestimated remains the Serbian researcher Zoran Vidojevic who discovered such a phenomenon as neototalitarianism in the post-communist space. Naturally, this is a transient phenomenon which leaves nations the freedom of an alternative. He arrived at this conclusion in 1997. It is obvious now that the so-called color revolutions were the continuation of velvet revolutions which put an end to occupational totalitarianism – “tank socialism.” The color revolutions were aimed at overcoming the “own” neototalitarianism, but Georgia and Ukraine could not avoid Moscow’s interference. The velvet revolutions went off so smoothly only because the USSR stayed clear of the European events.

Ten years ago Eastern Europe first saw the outlines of its main contradiction. The neototalitarian Russia began to copy and develop gradually, step by step, the classical patterns of totalitarianism. The emergent civil nations in Georgia and Ukraine were naturally oriented to European political culture from which Russia was more and more departing. Russia lost a historical chance to form in Eastern Europe and the entire Eurasia an alliance of democracies, which would have been a center of Judeo-Christian civilization. The neighbors’ European choice began to be viewed as a threat not only to the never-changing ruling elite, but also to Russian identity and totalitarian Russian civilization which positions itself as anticivilization and has no positive values and achievements.

The struggle over European association catalyzed the process underway in Russia. When the media began to chant, day after day, paranoid mantras about the historic choice of Ukraine between Russia and Europe, any person who knew the Russian cultural and intellectual tradition, felt bewildered. What about all that Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Likhachev, and many other thinkers of different (let us emphasize this) political views used to say about unity of Europe and Russia? As Solovyov said, it is not the liberals who invented the Russian European. For example, Dostoevsky – no liberal at all – recognized affinity with Europe. I am saying this because “liberal” and “democrat” are swearwords in contemporary Russia’s official political language. Even Slavophiles accepted European identity.

The totalitarian U-turn does not mean the choice of a tradition or trend in the Russian thought. It ruins the foundations of Russian intellectualism which has always been European even in its Eurasian variety, even in the NKVD-KGB version of Eurasianism. As for the anti-Ukrainian hysteria, it has always been based on the refusal to recognize Ukrainians as a nation: Ukraine is “Unterrussland,” the Ukrainian language is “Untersprache,” and Ukrainians are lowbred Russians. For this reason, Russia views Ukraine’s European choice as national treason, as an attempt of some Russians to set themselves off against the rest of Russia.

All this was discernible back in 2004. It took Russia 10 years to be prepared for a direct aggression which I thought was possible as early as 2009. It is difficult to say this unless more research is made, but it seems to me that if Moscow had not called Yanukovych back, it would have still annexed Crimea and established Novorossia. There is ample proof of a long and intensive preparation for these actions.

The same conclusion – about intensive preparatory work – was also obvious 10 years ago, when a predatory-style reform of government began over the corpses of Beslan children. To be more exact, this reform continued at a higher speed and intensity. Taking into account the work style of Russian bureaucrats, this kind of decisions cannot be prepared in a week’s time.

Russia was setting up – in a planned and streamlined manner – a new system of government, which separated the authorities from the populace, and the latter was supporting this “division of labor.” What became a foreign-policy milestone was Putin’s Munich speech in 2007 which announced the beginning of a new Russian expansionism.

The ongoing processes in Ukraine had nothing in common with what was going on in Russia, although they still showed convergence between the Ukrainian and Russian ruling elites. No matter what Ukrainian democracy is (it boils down to the confrontation of clans), it had and still has a distinctive feature: it is national, Ukrainian. Totalitarian tendencies in Ukrainian political culture are associated with Russification and proximity – overt or covert – with Russian political culture. And the point is not in language problems or interest in Russian culture. Russification means borrowing the basic features of Russian totalitarianism. It is not so much about the cult of force as, on the contrary, about the imposition of  powerlessness and unscrupulousness. It is, for example, the refusal of some Ukrainian intellectuals to take a certain attitude to the cult figures of Russian culture who have supported the seizure of Crimea and the incursion on Ukraine or pretend not to see this incursion.

The power of the Kremlin’s strategy rests on uncertainty and ambiguity. President Poroshenko’s decision to isolate the DNR was extremely unpleasant for the Kremlin. It is clear at a closer examination that in all the conflicts, including the one in Chechnya, the Kremlin cashed in on unclear statuses, opaque financial flows, the overall mess and muddle. For this reason, incidentally, it is hesitating to continue the war, although this would be quite in line with the plan of eliminating Ukraine and establishing Novorossia.

It is too early for Putin to resume military operations. He hopes for the winter, the freezing of Ukraine, the absence of reforms, a political crisis, demoralization of the army, an increased support for the Kremlin in the West and the growing pressure on Ukraine, the suffocation of the country by refugees, economic and other sabotage, and well-orchestrated mass-scale unrest. He has a lot of peaceful instruments at his disposal.

But, unlike his predecessors, Putin has given up peace-loving rhetoric. The heat of militaristic propaganda inside the country is so high that it looks as if they soon are going to ban the song “Let There Always Be Sunshine” and even Stalin-era choral compositions on peace. Nor is there anything peaceful in the external propaganda.

At first glance, it is unclear why Putin has not yet proclaimed himself guarantor of stability in Eastern Europe and, later, in Eurasia, why he has not done so in the course of active actions aimed at the Western media, public, and politicians. For it goes without saying that the West can also cash in on this – its politicians do not have so far a conceptual excuse for having betrayed Ukraine.

I have only one explanation: this runs counter to the entire content of the present-day agitprop and all the actions of Putin because it has some constructive and positive connotations. The Kremlin’s rhetoric is permeated with aggressiveness and paranoid attitudes – NATO is surrounding Russia. Putin is not buying the West by with peace and stability, as Brezhnev did in the 1970s. He is intimidating the whole world.

And this also confirms the absurdity of comparing Putin and Brezhnev. There is not a trace of stability nowadays and no stagnation is in sight – the current regime is quite dynamic. But, as is known, dynamism is not a synonym to development   – the former can also be degradational.

Speaking of Russia, you must not evaluate the policies of an emergent and burgeoning totalitarian state by the criteria of a democratic one. In this case, growth and victory will give way to full collapse and defeat. It was a victory for Putin to make a showy dictatorial gesture when leaving Brisbane: he shook hands with a policeman. It was a victory to grant an interview to German television, in which Putin admitted the military invasion of Crimea on the eve of the so-called referendum. The president of Russia very quickly instilled the principles of a new world order in the minds of peoples. It is the Orwellian “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” All states are equal, but Russia is more equal than other states. Others must not dare move their troops onto the territory of neighbors at their own will, while Russia can dare. And nobody is preventing or trying to prevent her from doing so. Therefore, the rest of the states are inferior in comparison to Russia.

There will be nightmarish consequences for the population of Russia because the same principle of governmental permissiveness will be also applied to it. And nobody will be able to protect the populace. The latter will not protect themselves, either, because it has accepted this permissiveness. All the previous international law, morality, and laws of Russia herself are trash.

Whether or not the population of Ukraine, now face to face with Russia, will accept this kind of Russification is a question to Ukrainians themselves.

Dmitry Shusharin is a Moscow-based historian and political journalist