Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 18 – Russia’s latest
turn to authoritarianism and isolationism was possible because of the
provincialism of its leaders and people, a sense of being on the margins of the
real world and one that prevents them from achieving greatness because they are
less interested in that than in “seeking to present the great as small,”
Vladislav Inozemtsev says.
Today there can be no doubt, the
Moscow commentator says, that “Russia has chosen for a long time to come the
course of authoritarianism in domestic policy and isolationism in foreign
affairs, that its economy will be sacrificed to ideological schemas, and that
propaganda will replace a serious analysis of what is going on” (snob.ru/selected/entry/86495).
That “truly epochal turn,” he
suggests, would have been impossible if it were not for the sense of
provincialism which has long dominated Russian thinking, a particular and
dangerous response of Russia to its emergence as “a contemporary nation” on the
European frontier” rather than as a core part of it.
In contrast to the United States
which never doubted that it was fully part of Europe and then went beyond it by
“positioning itself as a center of the world, as ‘a city on the hill’ capable
of setting the agenda for the world and not seriously inclined to deal with its
opponents,” Russia “moved in the opposite direction.”
Russia’s “imagined ‘Eurasianism’
converted it into a province, cut it off from Europe but did not bring it close
to Asia,” Inozemtsev says. The fact that Russians continue to talk about this
suggests “a very serious medical” condition: “We do not know who we are and
therefore we do not believe in ourselves.”
Russian “political discourse
practically always is conducted from the position of a country against which
the entire rest of the world is arrayed,” he says, adding that “paradoxically,
such a mentality of the national elite in the overwhelming majority of cases pushes
any country onto the periphery and deprives any nation of the chance for
development.”
Like other countries whose elites
seek legitimacy in “the struggle with a hostile environment,” Russia is led by politicians
who “subconsciously are trying via ‘the hostility’ of the rest of the world to
raise their own significance” not by achieving something on their own but by
denigrating others.
Indeed, Inozemtsev says, a clear
sign of Russia’s peripheral position and its provincialism is that “he who
cannot do anything great seeks to present the great as small,” something that
blocks a serious consideration of real problems by focusing attention on
marginal ones and thus prevents Russia from moving forward.
“We have become provincials,” he
argues, “by having sharply turned away even from Soviet globalism to a
mono-national, particularist ‘Russian world,’ by voluntarily excluding ourselves
from the world’s humanitarian discourse” and thus condemning Russia to
backwardness.
“Great countries are not afraid of
opposition,” but weak ones are. And “despite all the talk about the greatness
of our power, [Russians] daily and hourly demonstrate our lack of certainty
about what greatness is possible and achievable,” and we show that we would
rather be a large fish in a small pond than a larger fish in a bigger one.
Thus, Russia seeks to create a
Eurasian Union that recalls not the EU but Chavez’ plans for a Bolivar
Community in Latin America, and its Novorossiya project has the result of
transforming the country into a Republic Serbska, “which in essence cost Serbia
its status as a normal country.”
As long as it remains mired in this
provincialism, Inozemtsev continues, “Russia will never become a great and
successful country whatever the prices of oil are and however favorable is the
world financial situation.” Instead, it will remain backward because it will
see around it not opportunities but enemies.
How Russia should behave is shown by
Germany, he suggests. Having lost two wars, Germans decided that they needed to
leave war behind and as a result they have “become the political center of
Europe and one of the most successful economies of the world” and do not spend
their time worrying about the loss of Koenigsberg.
But Russia has not followed that
course. Instead, because of its provincialism, it has gone in the opposite
direction, acting as if war was the answer to its problems and the annexation
of Crimean a demonstration of its power, only to find that its invasion of that
Ukrainian territory has left Russia “an international outcast.”
Because of its provincialism,
Inozemtsev concludes, Russia’s consciousness is infected with irrationality and
the goals it has set itself are “phenomenally not thought out.” If the country does not move beyond this, he
says, this “illness [will be] the greatest threat to the future of a
potentially great country.”
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