Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 16 – Vladimir Putin’s
actions in Ukraine, Yevgeny Gontmakher says, are accelerating the disappearance
of Russia not so much in the sense of pointing to a change in its borders but
rather with regard to the existence of a distinctive Russian society capable of
surviving into the future.
In an interview published by
Polit.ru yesterday, the deputy director of the Moscow Instiute of World
Economics and International Relations and frequent commentator on economics and
politics, lays out his reasons for this “pessimistic” assessment of the
situation (polit.ru/article/2014/04/15/gontmakher/).
What
has made Russia a distinct civilization is now under threat, he says, and
therefore it is entirely possible to make “the diagnosis” that “Russia is
disappearing.” Gontmakher begins by noting that people have been talking about
Russia as some kind of “separate civilization” since tsarist times.
Uvarov’s trinity of “Orthodoy,
Autocracy, and Nationality” was inadequate to describe it, he says, but “the
phenomenon of ‘Russianness’ ... existed,” although it was difficult to
describe, and allowed people to distinguish Russianness from Germanness or
Chineseness. But “now the end is coming
to this special quality.”
This is not a question of borders,
Gontmakher continues. He says that he is “practically certain that Russian
perhaps even another century will exist in its current borders. But this is not
the most important thing.” What is important and what is disappearing is what
many have called “the phenomenon of a special ‘Russian civilization.’”
That was undermined in the first
instance by the events of the 20th century. He points to three “strata”
or levels on which this is clearly shown.
The first and “most external” is theinstitution of the state. What is striking is that in 1917 and 1991 the
state dissolved overnight, even though “many consider ‘Russian civilization’
and ‘the Russian state’ as synonyms.”
Unfortuntely, he
says, Russia has not been able to establish an effective state over the last
two decades. While there are “dozens of ministries, hudnreds of thousands of
bureaucrats atall level, and enormous budgets,” “corruption, ineffectiveness,
unprofessionalism, and personal rule” have deprived it of any real
self-definition.
The disappearance of Russianness is
also in evidence at a second level, in what is called “civil society.” The
Soviet system represented “the apotheosis of atomization of society,” and the
post-Soviet system has not changed that fundamentally. As with the state, he continues, there are
lots of pseudo-NGOs, but “a significant part” of them are in fact GONGOs –
government organized non-governmental organizations” – rather than the real
thing.
That is a critical reality,
Gontmakher says, “because if a society cannot organize itself, then it is
condemned to lose its deepest sense of identity,” and that is what is happening
in Russia today. Moreover, the regime is
making it worse, refusing to support self-government because people at the local
level “do not know and understand” what to do.
But as the Moscow economist points
out, “you can only learn to swim when you jump into the water” – and that is
something the Kremlin isn’t prepared to allow.
But it is at the third level that
the situation is the most serious and fundamental, Gontmakher continues. The health
and well-being of a nation “in the broadest sense of the word” depends on the
state of inter-personal relations. If those are “relatively healthy,” a nation
can come back from almost anything. But in Russia, they are anything but that.
Putin’s Ukrainian policy has both
revealed how ill these relations are and made them worse. It has divided people even within families on
the basis of the suddenly introduced principle that “he who is not with us is
against us,” a dangerous idea from the 1930s and one that has grown with “the
mass xenophobia” of the current period.
This illness has also been
exacerbated by a decline in the material well-being of Russians and by Putin’s
decision to rely on oil and gas exports rather than broader economic development,
Gontmakher continues. But all of those
problems have been exacerbated by the events in Ukraine and Moscow’s approach
to them.
In any society, there is always “the
problem of ‘the majority’ and ‘the minority,’” he points out. But what has
Putin done? “He has destroyed [that]
schema,” one in which the minority proposes and the majority disposes,” and
demonized anyone who questions what he as the “minority” has decided.
To achieve that goal, Gontmakher
adds, Putin has unleashed “an gigantic quantity of anger and interpersonal
division.” The Kremlin leader may think
he has “everything under control,” but he has set in motion forces which are
larger than he thinks, that are destroying the social fabric of Russia, and
that will take decades if not generations to rein in.
Given that, many are going to leave
Russia because they have no future in the Putin economy or social system. And many who don’t leave are going to once
again constitute “an internal emigration,” another phenomenon that will only
lead to further “personal degradation and collapse.”
The Russia that will lead to a
decade or so from now, Gontmakher says, will be a country “without a civil
society” except an “imitation” one, with “imitation” parties,” and acountry in which anyone who opposes the
regime will be told to leave or face repression.
Before the Ukrainian events, Russia
was already “a regional power,” but it had the chance to form allied relations
with Europe and the US. Now, this variant is “unreal because we have been
stricken from the list of potential allies of both the West, and let us not
engage in illusions, China as well.”
Russia has “fallen out of this world
order,” he continues, and “even on the post-Soviet space [it] cannot be
confident that our partners in some future Eurasian Union – Belarus and
Kazakhstan – will not one fine day say ‘good bye’ to Russia.”
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