Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 14 – Ukraine’s
drive to become a European country is forcing Russians to recognize that their
country isn’t one, a reflection that helps to explain why many Russians are so
angry at Ukraine and so willing to accept the Kremlin’s version of events
there, according to Artemy Troitsky.
In a commentary in “Novaya gazeta”
yesterday, the Russian journalist says that in his view, “one can consider a
European a country which sincerely wants to be European, even if not everything
in it yet corresponds to that status. In
this case, Ukraine is undoubtedly one,” but Russia is not (novayagazeta.ru/columns/66795.html).
Prior to the Crimean Anschluss
almost a year ago, “no one cast doubt on the ‘Europeanist’ nature of the
Russian Federation.” Or more precisely, the journalist says, no one discussed
Russia’s situation in exactly those terms. Instead, while admitting that Russia
was different, these conversations were of the kind that “everything was in
order.”
“Yes, [Russia has] autocracy instead
of democracy, problems with human rights … but on the level of culture,
mentality, and general civilization,” Troitsky says, “of course, we Russians
are ‘white people’!” And Russia’s failings like corruption are to
be found “not just in Nigeria” but in European countries like Greece and Italy.
But the reactions of Russians to
Ukraine’s announced goal of joining Europe changed that, he continues. At the
very least, that effort by a neighboring country “cast doubt” on Russia’s
relationship to Europe and suggested to many that the whole notion that Russia
is part of Europe was problematic if not wrong.
Over the past year, he points out, “the
words ‘Europe’ and ‘European’ have become with [Russians] terms of abuse,” a
sharp change from the recent past when the term “’European’” was considered a
compliment. Now it is a synonym for perverts, weaklings, and degenerates or
even worse.
Among Russians, Troitsky says, this “active
anti-Europeanism was not so much declared ‘from above’ (there they still prefer
more diplomatic expressions) than arose from below,” but the extent to which it
has spread is reflected not just in Russian attitudes toward Ukraine but in
Russian reactions to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.
Widespread Russian anger at
Ukrainians over the last year “shocked but can easily be explained by the total
television propaganda” to which Russians were subject. But “in the drama of
Charlie Hebdo, no Russian national, political, historical or geographic
interests were involved.” Moreover, many Russians have little sympathy for
Islam more generally.
However, the frequently expressed view
among Russians that the French themselves were to blame for what happened
because of their excessive tolerance “in a distilled form” highlighted just how
far from Europe many Russians are. “’Freedom? What freedom?” was the Russian
question.
“In fact,” Troitsky says, “Russian
public opinion has played the role it would have played if [Russia] were a
Muslim country – that is, the state is secular but the population in large
measure is godless, although it loves to cover itself with the idea of
Orthodoxy. Surprising? And how!”
To put things even more bluntly and
clearly, he continues, it is possible to say that “the aversion of the majority
of Russians to so-called European values is stronger than dislike to Islamists
and hatred for terrorists,” even though Russians have suffered from the latter
to a significant degree.
This is logical but only in terms of
the logic of what he calls “the paradigm of 2014/2015.” Russia’s positioning of
itself relative to Europe, Troitsky argues, is “not identical but similar” to the
one between the Middle East and North Africa, on the one hand, and Europe, on
the other.
In both cases, Europe is
geographically close up, economic ties are close, and there is a diaspora from
them in Europe. But at the same time,
there is “a complete alienation in terms of value orientations, moral
priorities, and other firm issues of a humanitarian nature” which Europe
embodies.
There is “nothing new in this
situation,” the journalist says. “We are simply returning to pre-Petrine times
when the relations of Russia with Europe were sometimes full of conflicts,
sometimes pragmatic, but never close.” The opening of the “window on Europe”
made Russia a European power, but it did not make more than a tiny fraction of the
population Europeans.
At the end of the 19th
century, only 21 percent of Russians were literate, and 87 percent lived in the
villages. Many of the townspeople were “closer to the Black Hundreds than to
Europe. Indeed, “then as now, only about 10 to 15 percent of Russians could
legitimately be called “’Europeans.’”
“However strange it may sound, the
deepest and most successful effort to Europeanize Russia was undertaken by the
Bolsheviks: Marxism-Leninism unlike semi-Asiatic ‘Orthodox Autocracy’ was 100
percent a European ideology based on the ideas and pathos of the Enlightenment.”
But at the same time, for the Soviets, “Europe was an opponent.”
The collapse of the USSR and
communism led Russians to accept many of the aspects of capitalism, but beneath
the “glamor” of wealth for some, there also reemerged something “enormous and
dark” which has now assumed the dominant position – an antagonism to Europe and
all things European.
One might call this “the triumph of ‘nationality’”
in the Uvarov sense with its “ideology of ‘a new medievalism,’” something that
might have been appropriate in the 14th century but looks like “a
caricature” in the 21st.
“Present-day Russia does not have
any allies unlike Europe or strength like China or an iron religion like the
Arabs,” and thus it is increasingly defining itself not in terms of what it is
but of what it is not – and it is not European, the Russian journalist
suggests, however much some would like it to be otherwise.
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