Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 16 – Many
commentators suggest that Vladimir Putin is trying to restore an updated
version of the Soviet Union and point to his return to many Soviet policies at home
and abroad, but it is critically important to understand, Andrey Zubov argues,
that people recognize that the Kremlin leader is restoring Soviet but not
Communist values.
In an interview with Lithuania’s
Delfi news agency, the Russian historian and former MGIMO faculty member says
in contrast to the countries of Eastern Europe, Russia has broken only with
communism but not with Sovietism and that unless it does with both, it risks a
return to totalitarianism or to decay (ru.delfi.lt/opinions/comments/andrej-zubov-sejchas-dlya-rossii-moment-vybora.d?id=66877896).
The current Moscow elite consists of
“the descendants of those who occupied the Baltic countries and persecuted the
opponents of Soviet power.” Its members
have benefitted from the privatization of Soviet wealth, but they were never
forced from power and replaced by those who rejected many other Soviet values.
Today, Zubov argues, Russians face a
choice between making the difficult but necessary choice between continuing as
they are with the possibility that their country will either decay or restore a
new kind of totalitarianism or have the chance to make the progress toward democracy
and freedom that East Europeans have.
That choice has been sharpened by
the actions of the Kremlin, on the one hand, and the impact of the declines in
oil prices and the ruble exchange rate which have left the Moscow leadership
without the resources to buy the population off and thus continue the
Soviet-type policies natural too them.
According to Zubov, “2014 turned out
to be the moment of truth” because the issues that were not fully addressed in
1991-1993 “have returned.” Indeed, he says, “we are seeing the return of soviet
but not communist values, in the guise of a corporate state of a fascist type …
Not a Nazi but fascist type because [Russia] has no racial policy.” Such a
state is authoritarian “with inclinations toward totalitarianism.”
Among his other observations, Zubov points
out that the poll numbers Putin has even now reflect not just the fear of
repression but the fear Russians have that the country could slide back toward
what happened in 1991 and under Yeltsin.
That helps explain what Putin has done in Ukraine: by seizing Crimea, he
has reminded Russians of what they think happened in 1991 and thus transformed
in their eyes the Maidan into a “smuta” that must be suppressed.
But
now that it has become clear that Putin’s pans to dismember Ukraine fully and
replace the Poroshenko regime have been blocked, Zubov says, “the Russian
authorities are in a position close to despair and when the economy began to
get worse, this despair grew into real horror.”
There is not any optimism in the Kremlin now.
Putin
and his entourage understand something else as well, Zubov says. They recognize
that “everything can with unbelieavable speed lead to a social catastrophe,”
and as former KGB officers who watched what happened in the USSR, “they now
with horror await this revolution,” even though “a revolution is less probable
than they think.”
The
reason for that is that there is not an opposition capable of leading one, at
least not yet. Consequently, the regime still has a choice: it can turn away
from its imperialism in Ukraine and restore ties with the West or it can
continue as it is and thus play a role in pushing Russia to “a social
catastrophe” and ‘a Russian rising’” against the regime.
Zubov also provides an intriguing answer to the question
of why so many rightwing parties in Europe nonetheless support Putin and his
policies. “In contemporary Western
society,” he says, the chief value is the individual” regardless of language or
faith. “This is liberalism raised to the highest
degree.”
Indeed,
it is unprecedented in the world, and it is not entirely surprising that it has
generated a backlash. “The right and also the left appeal to the old values of race, national culture, historical religion, class, the glorious past of their
own people and so on. Thus we have a clash of two value systems – one based on
the individual and one based on the group.”
Zubov says that he does not think Russia will risk moving
against the Baltic countries because of their
membership in NATO, but for Russian aggression against them to be
impossible in future, “or course, there must be a different regime in Russia,
one that corresponds to the regimes of Europe and not a post-Soviet regime as
now.”
Russia
could play that role successfully, Zubov says, just as post-1945 Germany is now
playing a major and positive role on the continent, something that would have
been impossible if Germany had not undergone a thoroughgoing de-Nazification
process.
The
Moscow historian says that Russia is not a totalitarian state now but rather an
authoritarian one in which citizens have some freedoms but one where the regime
does not pay any attention to their views when it makes decisions. That regime has maintained itself by among
other things falsification of elections.
“But
now [Russia] stands before a fork in the road – one which leads to
totalitarianism of a nationalist-fascist type, with corresponding consequences
both for Russia and for the entire world and the other which leads to
democracy, a free market and the observance of human rights. The result of the
second would be the return of Russia to Europe and of freedom, security and
well-being to Russians.”
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