Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 11 – Many commentators
have observed that those Russians who support an activist and expansive foreign
policy at the same time back authoritarianism at home, while those who support
the democratization of the country oppose that kind of foreign policy because
they see it as threatening ties with the West.
That confronts those who would like
to see democracy at home but a forceful foreign policy at home with a false
choice, one in which they are called to sacrifice something they care about in
one sphere in order to realize it in another, according to Aleksandr Lukin, pro-rector
of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy (ng.ru/ideas/2014-04-09/5_collapse.html).
In
an article in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” this week, Lukin argues there is no
necessity to choose “chauvinism or chaos” as Russian liberalism in the past
supported an activist defense of Russia’s national interests abroad while
backing reforms at home and as Russian conservativism often opposed an activist
foreign policy in order to protect authoritarianism at home.
But those traditions of the
nineteenth century have broken down, he says, because of the specific features
of post-Soviet Russia and the international community within which it exists;
and therefore, as so many Russians in the past have done, he calls for “a third
way” so that his country does not have to sacrifice one or another of the
things he wants.
Lukin’s argument is not entirely
persuasive – in Russia as in many other countries, there is often inverse connection
between expansiveness abroad and democracy at home – it is important to attend
to his words because they reflect the effort of some close to the Kremlin to
back away at least to some extent from the more draconian consequences of such
a relationship.
The events of the last several months
involving Ukraine, the pro-rector argues, represents a breakdown in what he
calls “the post-Soviet consensus” in which Russia considered itself a partner
of the West and sought cooperation with it.
As a result, it is quite likely that “the entire system of international
relations and the internal life of Russia will not be what they were.”
That “consensus” was nominally based
on the ideas that “both sides would move toward closer cooperation, that both
would act on the basis of the interests of the other, and that both would seek
mutually acceptable compromises,” Lukin says. But according to him, “in
practice only Russia fulfilled these conditions,” and the breakdown is thus
entirely the fault of the West.
The West has failed and is failing
to take Russia’s interests into account especially those concerning the defense
of “the rights of the pro-Russian population in the former republics of the
USSR.” And nowhere has that been more
obvious, the pro-rector says, than in the case of ethnic Russians in Crimea and
Ukraine more generally.
Russia’s current proposals for
defending such groups are in Lukin’s telling entirely reasonable, “but in the eyes
of the West, to accept Russia’s proposals would mean to recognize that someone
besides itself has the right to define what is the public interest and what is
good and bad for other societies and states.”
Instead, he says, “the West is
choosing another approach, supporting pro-Western radicals everywhere on the
post-Soviet space which will generate new conflicts.” As a result, Russia is “re-orienting its
policy toward the South and East,” a shift that the West has “left” Moscow with
no choice but to make.
But the crux of Lukin’s article lies
elsewhere, in the relationship between Russia’s foreign policy and Russia’s
domestic ones. “For some reason,” he says, “in Russia today, the supporters of liberalization
of society almost completely lack an understanding of the national tasks of the
country” and are prepared to defer to the West.
And, the foreign ministry official
says, “at the same time, those who support an [independent] role for Russia in
the world and the strengthening of its influence usually are supporters of a
harsh internal regime, authoritarianism and at times even the rebirth of
Stalinism.”
Many see this
pattern as logical or even inevitable, but it was “not always” the case in
Russia in the past. In the nineteenth
century, “conservatives in tsarist Russia typically were not supporters of an
active foreign policy,” while liberals were often the strongest supporters of
precisely such a policy.
That earlier pattern reflected the
conservatives’ understanding that the country should preserve its resources
rather than spend them on costly foreign policy measures and the liberals’ view
that “a modernized and even Westernized Russia must not be a subordinate part
of the Western world but a legitimate and powerful part with its own interests.”
But more recently that pattern has
broken down and some recent liberals have even taken the view that Russia
should be divided up in order to liberalize. “Such views were reflected even in
the draft constitution of Andrey Sakharov,” Lukin says. But they reflect a
complete failure to understand the situation.
On the one hand, “the division of the
country could not be bloodless,” the pro-rector insists. And on the other, any “plan
for the division of one’s own country points to a non-recognition of its
historical and cultural values” and is “in essence” a reflection of “ideological
hatred toward it.”
There were some liberals in tsarist
Russia who were infected with such ideas, but these views “were not
characteristic for the liberal majority and represented more curiosities than
anything else.” Now, however, such ideas are more widespread, a result of the
specific features of the USSR and the conditions of its disintegration.
First, given the “stratification of
all spheres of life” in the USSR, “the struggle for freedom was inevitably linked
with a struggle not only against the specific Soviet state but against the
state as such.”
Second, “Russian liberals were
educated on the basis of Soviet ideology and they understood its rejection as
[requiring] the creation of a new ideology,” that in many respects was the old
one “with a minus sign” in front of each of its elements.
And third, given their “poor
knowledge of the history and culture of their own country, particularly its
religious aspect (which itself is a consequence of Soviet anti-religious training)”
means that the liberals did not master and incorporate in their own programs “the
unique wealth” of Russian culture which “is significantly different than the
European tradition.”
For its own reasons, the West encouraged
all these attitudes among Russian liberals, Lukin says, although he notes that
anti-government attitudes “in the West and especially in the United States are
much more typical of extreme conservatives than they are of liberals.”
As a result, he says, the dominance
of an anti-state ideology in liberalism and the human rights movement today in
essence is just as much a survival of the Soviet system as the directly
opposite efforts to restore the attributes and symbols of the USSR,” but again “with
an opposite sign.”
“If the struggle for liberalization
in contemporary Russia has been monopolized by anti-state people and primitive
westernizers ... the struggle for Russian national goals in fact has been
monopolized by supporters of a dictatorship,” a pattern Lukin says has been
especially obvious during the recent events surrounding Ukraine.
This situation would appear to put
Russians before a choice between two positions that are unacceptable to many: “either
they support democratization and oppose the strengthening of Russia in the world
arena” or they back “the obligatory establishment of dictatorship, nationalism
and threats all around.”
In short, they are told they must
choose between “Dugin and Prokhanov,” on the one hand, “or Nemtsov and
Kasparov,” on the other, Lukin says.
The first view “suspiciously
corresponds to the interests of the corrupt compradore stratum headed by the
oligarchs and major bureaucrats who are worried about their savings and
properties in London,” while the second appears to be “the ideology of the
special services,” who want to promote the idea that Russia is “a besieged
fortress” surrounded by enemies.
“Today, the bearers [of this second
position], unlike in Soviet and Yeltsin times, no longer restrain the political
authorities because they themselves are those authorities,” Lukin continues. But
Russians should not have to make this choice. They should be in a position to
support “a free but strong and independent Russia,” Lukin says.
Today, he continue, “the close
interconnection between democracy and the foreign policy goals of the West is
no more than a myth of the Russian liberal opposition,” he argues, because the
West does not act according to the rules that it insists others obey. Instead,
it is involved in “the most profound hypocrisy,” and Russian liberals need to
understand that.
At the same time, Lukin says,
neither he nor the majority of Russians welcomes the prospect that their
country will move in the direction of becoming “a besieged fortress controlled
by those who see enemies everywhere and who view all those who disagree [with
the regime] as traitors or part of a fifth column.”
But the sense many Russians have that
this is the choice they face is already leading “many talented people” to
emigrate, “not only to the West but alo to the countries of Asia: China,
Thailand, India and so on.”
According to Lukin, “there is only
one way out.” Russians must be offered “a
third path which will correspondent to the aspirations of the majority,” one
that will unite “normal and moderate patriotism” based on legitimate pride in
the country’s past “with a moderate
liberalism” which will seek to promote a “freer, law-based, corruption free”
state and society.
“The European path or vector of
Russia’s development must mean not the subordination of its interests to the EU
but a borrowing of the positive elements of European statehood acceptable for
Russia, above all, the supremacy of law, constructive relations with Europe and
the US, and ... the tough insistence on its own interests.”
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