Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 24 – Neither Ukraine
nor Russia has it easy as a result of their Soviet pasts and the collapse of
Western moral leadership, but nevertheless, Ukraine by virtue of its pluralism,
regionalism and more honest dealing with the past offers far more reasons for
optimism than does the Russian Federation, according to Liliya Shevtsova.
Speaking to a group of journalism
students in Kyiv, Shevtsova, an associate of the Moscow Carnegie Center and a
prominent Russian commentator, offered praise for what Ukraine has achieved but
only concern about what is happening in the West and in Russia (day.kiev.ua/ru/article/mirovye-diskussii/zakat-zapada-i-rossiyskaya-matrica).
The Moscow analyst began by noting
that Ukraine and Russia share many problems, not just the familiar ones of
their common Soviet past but the especially critical ones caused by “the deep
and prolonged crisis” of the internatonal system and especially of the absence
of leaders and leadership from Western civilization.
These latter two problems are
especially great both because “Western civilization was the motor of world
development, innovation, brave thinking and freedom” and because no country
will find it easy to make the transition from an authoritarian or totalitarian
past without the existence of such leadership.
The West has lost its way, and it
does not have leader like de Gaulle, Churchill, Reagan, Mitterand, Kohl or
Thatcher who inspired those in Eastern Europe like Havel, Lennart Meri, or
Walensa. After them, there were no leaders. Everything “ended.” And because the
West has “lost itself,” “there were for favorable external contitions” for
Ukraine or Russia.
The West can get out of this crisis
as it has gotten out of earlier ones, she suggested, with the appearance of a
new generation of leaders who will turn away from “pure pragmatism” at home and
abroad and be guided once againin their approach by “the restoration of the
valus and principles of freedom.”
Once that happens, Shevtsova says,”it
will beeasier for us to breathe” and to make progress toward those goals we
share with the West.
The situation in this regard with
respect to Russia is especially unfortunate, she continued. Russi “missed its chance in 1991” when there
was a chance for the new independent states to begin to construct their statehood
and to form their nations.” Instead of doing so, Russia remained in an
indeterminate status and then turned to the past.
Having ceased to be the Soviet
Union, she argued, Russia all the same used the very same “Russian matrix only
without communism,” a situation which has meant that “for the last 20 years, we
have attempted to livein this ‘indeterminate one’ trying to show on the one
hand that we are a democracy and on the other w are continuing all of the old
model of autocracy.”
Initially, Shevtsova continued,
Russians were ashamed of this, then “they concealed it, but now,” they are
quite open about it. Instead of an
imitation, the Russian authorities have moved to selective repression,”
repression reflecting the weakness of the regime rather than its strength and
pointing to the final agony of these arrangements.
“But there is no joy in that the
Putin system is losing its staility because a dramatic situation is arising [in
Russia]: despite the fact that the current authorities are losing their
popularity, the system of autocracy itself has many more bases for survival”
and can do so for a long time to come, all the more so because even many of its
opponents want to use the same kind of personal and autocratic power.
The Putin regime in Russia is a new
kind one based on “total and absolute loyalty.” Any deviation will be
punished. But this requirement of the
system “means that there is no independent game in politics.” That is sometime obscured by the ability of
the opposition to express their views on the Internet and in certain Moscow
newspapers.
“But the overwhelming part of
[Russian] society gets its information from television,” which is controlled by
the state. And as a result, “the
opposition and the critics of the regime … cannot exert decisive influenc on
the formation of public opinioin.” It can, however, frighten the regime by mass
actions.
That is what happened after the
Bolotnoye protests. But the Kremlin
reacted by deciding that it “woud no longer allow the smallest chance for ‘orange
outburts’ in Moscow. The authorities
understand that they have lost Moscow nd the major citieis and decided to
tighten the screws.”
That has meant “the formation of
a new pretorian regime, one more cruel than its predecessor.” The Kemlin doesn’t
particularly want that development, Shevtsova argued, “but the logic of
survival is driving it to the use of force” and to a reliance on the most
traditional strata of society, on the search for enemies and Soviet-style
mobilization.
The active part of Russian
society is still reflecting what to do. The last wave ofcivic protest has died
away, and “the next one must be more organied, politically structured and have
a different agenda if it wants to be successful,” onedirected not at making the
autocracy better but at “transforming the autocracy into a legal state.”
.
Turning to the situation of
Ukraine, Shevtsova said she was “more optimistic” at least in comparison with
her assessment of Russia. “You have done
one big thing which we in Russia up to now have not done: you have begun to
strengthen the state but on new principles … a very rare experiment when a
nation not yet having become a nation forms a state.”
Moreover, she continued, in Ukraine,
there has been “a preservation of political pluralism, regionalization, and also
a lack of desire on the part of the Ukrainian political elite to presereve its
power” by any means and by subordinating itself to Russia. Instead, Ukraine has
begun the difficult but necessary changes needed to become part of the European
Union.
And finally and perhaps most
important,Ukrainians “have begun to write your own history. You have done what
no one other than the Baltic states have done. I praise Yushchenko who did an
absolutely phenomena thing relative to the Terror Famine: he legally defined
the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.”
“Why is this important? Because it
legally strengthenes a different treatment of the history of the Ukrainian
nation which has still not been formed,” Shevtsova said.
That does not mean there are not
problems and disappointments with Ukraine, however. Shevtsova said that in the
1990s she had thought “Ukraine would go to the West first, that it would be an
experiment and create a legal state earlier than Russia. But that did not
happen.”
Russia’s approach to Ukraine has not
helped. Vladimir Putin doesn’t view
Ukraine as a state at all, and his view is shared by most of the ruling elite.
They don’t think much about Ukraine or consider it a priority. “There is a
complete lack of understanding and absence of information and knowledge which
always leads to an inadequate policy.”
At the same time, Shevtsova said, Russia’s
liberal opposition does not have a clearly developed position about Ukraine.
Most of its members have the opinion that “Ukraine is in a aone of civiiaitonal
indeterminancy” but with “a plus sign” that means it has “the potential of
movement to Europe.”
But “one thing is clear: we will not
go to the West and to Europe together. You hav a chance to use a half opened
window” to do so. But it is a chance that must be used and used quickly because
remaining in a state of indeterminacy for long will ultimately lead back to the
past as it has in Russia.
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