Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 13 – By his
intervention in Ukraine, an event that represents the equivalent of “a Crimean
Reichstag fire,” Vladimir Putin has
begun a revolutionary process in Russia, one intended to block any challenge to
the authoritarian legitimacy of his regime but one that neither he nor Russia
can fully control, according to Vladimir Pastukhov.
In an essay on the Polit.ru portal
today, the St. Antony’s College Russian expert says that what Putin has
launched in Crimea appears likely to have such far-reaching effects on Russia
and the world that soon the invasion of that Ukrainian peninsula will be viewed
as “a second-order historical fact” (polit.ru/article/2014/03/13/acident/).
Putin’s intervention in or more
precisely his provocation of “a civil war in Ukraine” has less to do with the
foreign policy interests of the Russian Federation than with internal political
developments. Indeed, Pastukhov argues, “aggression is a reaction to a
pre-revolutionary tie of troubles in Russia itself.”
Consequently, he argues, it is
important to consider what Moscow is doing in Crimea and Ukraine “not only in military-political
but also a mystical-symbolic” terms. Crimea, he writes, “is a code word in
Russian historical memory.” Bitterness about its loss in 1991 is thus “beyond
the limits of rational understanding and lives practically in every Russian
heart.”
Because that is the case, Pastukhov
says, “Putin did not simply send forces to Crimea. He turned a key in the
ignition of the national sub-conscious and instantly led the population of an
enormous country into a state of affect,” one whose hysterical manifestation
transformed the political situation in Russia itself.
Many in Russia beginning in 2011
expected that there would be a revolution in Russia, but the one that has
occurred is not the one they expected. It is “a black revolution” and it is led
by Putin. The reason for that is that “the
Kremlin decided not to wait until someone cast doubt on the authoritarian
legitimacy of the existing power but began to destroy it on its own initiative
in order to replace it with a new totalitarian legitimacy.”
Things were moving in that direction
before the Maidan, Pastukhov says, but “the events in Ukraine became the
catalyst which sharply accelerated the process” that had already begun symbolically
with the house arrest of Aleksey Navalny whose complaints about corruption were
something Putin and the Kremlin could not tolerate.
“The problem,” the St. Antony’s
scholar continues, “is that it is easy to lead society into an affect situation
but it is practically impossible to lead it out of such a state.” Germany had
to lose World War II. The Soviet Union had to lose the Cold War. “It is
difficult to imagine” what will be needed for Russia now.
“But what is still worse” is that
Putin, who has led society into this state has already “lost control over what is
taking place.” The situation is bigger
than he imagined and the Kremlin lacks the resources to ensure that it and not
others determines what will happen. What
is clear is that there will not be any rapid exit out of this situation for
Russia, Pastukhov says.
“Now, not only
Putin is a hostage of the situation in Russia, but Russia itself is a hostage
of the general world situation.” Its fate, Pastukhov says, depends on foreign
markets, some of which are manageable but some of which are not. And how the world reacts will depend on how
quickly the leaders of other powers understand what Putin is doing or at least
trying to do.
“Between the first and last acts of the drama will be a
significant lag time,” he concludes. And it is currently impossible to be sure
of just how many tragedies will be the result of what Putin is about. But the international community needs to
recognize both that “in Russia, Armageddon has begun” and that what the world
does in response will matter profoundly.
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