Paul Goble
Staunton,
April 1 – Russia today is in far worse shape than was the USSR at the end of
the first Cold War, Konstantin Sivkov says, and unless it takes radical
measures now, the forces that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union will have
“fatal consequences not only for Russia as a state but for the peoples who
populate it.”
Consequently,
the president of the Moscow Academy of Geopolitical Problems argues in a VPK
essay today, Moscow must focus on the experience of the USSR because it
provides a negative example of what not to do if one hopes to avoid defeat in the
course of the current heightening of international tensions (vpk-news.ru/articles/24528).
Among
the lessons current Russian rulers must learn if they are to avoid disaster,
Sivkov says, is that they must strengthen rather than weaken the FSB and its
control over key elites and that they must articulate a national idea based on
justice and equality rather than celebrate one based on Darwinian competition.
According
to Sivkov, “it is obvious” that “Russia is being drawn by the West into a new
phase of the cold war,” that East-West tensions are higher than they were at
the end of the last one, and that Russia both internationally and at home is in
a much worse position than the Soviet Union was before its collapse.
Geopolitically,
the Soviet Union had the Warsaw Pact and China as its allies, he continues. “Today, Russia observes its geopolitical
opponent at its own borders,” with the West extending its control “over the
countries of the former socialist camp and even certain post-Soviet republics.”
Moreover,
“the current allies of Russia are dependent on it significantly less than was
the case during the times of the USSR.” As a result, their support of Moscow is
“far from always guaranteed” as was shown by their responses to the Ukrainian
crisis and their increasingly independent foreign policies more generally.
Economically,
the situation of Russia today is incomparably worse than that of the Soviet
Union of a generation ago. The German invasion cost Russia more than half of
its industrial production, but the Soviet government was able to restore
it. Economic reforms have cost Russia
even more, and Moscow hasn’t. Indeed, in many areas, it is now dependent on the
West.
That is
because the Soviet system was driven by national goals and a plan, Sivkov
argues. Russia today, “under the capitalist means of production,” isn’t.
Instead, the priority for all economic actors is “maximum profits” for
themselves regardless of what that means for the country as a whole.
Spiritually,
the situation of Russia today is “even worse than in the economic sphere.” The Soviet people, he says, were “in their
absolute majority convinced in the correctness of the ruling socialist ideology.” More important, they viewed the social system
in the USSR as just and as an example for the world.
There is
nothing comparable to that in contemporary Russia, Sivkov says. “Social brotherhood
has been replaced by competitive relations.” As a result, “unqualified trust in
the ruling elite by society doesn’t exist. Instead, the situation is just the reverse.”
In terms
of security, the USSR had definite advantages in its military forces, its
special services, and its military-industrial complex, the Moscow analyst and
commentator says. The only sector in
which Russia today has an advantage is in its “nuclear potential.”
Despite
its advantages, the Soviet Union lost the first cold war, Sivkov says. If
Russia is to avoid losing the second, it must identify the numerous reasons that
happened in order to take preventive actions.
The first of these, he suggests, was “the
mistaken cadres policy” of the late Soviet period, a policy which allowed the
emergence of clans, the growth of capitalist values at the expense of socialist
ones, and a general decay which left the regime without people who could run a
planned economy of the defenders the system needed at the time of crisis.
A second cause, Sivkov argues, was
the spread of the false idea that military spending was crippling the country.
In fact, much military spending was going to civil needs both directly and
through the promotion of the kind of technological advancement that benefitted
all sectors of the economy. But that is not what most Soviet people came to
believe at the end.
And a third cause, related to the
second, is that ever more Soviet leaders began to forget what the security
needs of the country in fact were. “Serious problems arose in the security
system,” and they threatened the ability of the country’s armed forces to “guarantee
the neutralization of practically all types of armed threats without the
application of nuclear means.”
Unlike
in Russia today, the security services worked well both at home and abroad,
Sivkov says, but at a certain point, their positive role was seriously reduced
when the upper reaches of the party-state became “untouchable” as far as the
KGB was concerned, a development that led to the appearance and spread of
agents of influence and traitors.
And
equally unfortunately, the Moscow analyst says, this trend allowed the party-state
to put its own people in charge of the KGB and other Soviet security agencies.
That in turn reduced their effectiveness not only at home where the new
security heads began to display the same problems as the CPSU elite but abroad
as well.
“The
decay of the higher political elite in Russia is much deeper than was the case
in the USSR,” Sivkov says, with massive corruption remaining largely
unpunished, with selfishness enshrined as the highest value, and with clans
increasingly widespread and all too powerful, he suggests.
Neither
the elites nor the masses have a clearly defined national idea “which would
contain a clear understanding of social justice and demonstrate that our state
is built on the foundation of justice.” As
a result, there are increasing divides in Russian society and little chance for
the technological breakthrough the country needs.
And what
is perhaps worrisome if one looks to the future, Sivkov says, is that Moscow
now relies on its nuclear weapons for security because its “conventional forces
are capable of solving tasks only in low intensity conflicts.” And its FSB is much weaker because more of the
Russian elite is “untouchable.”
In that
situation, he says, “’the fifth column’ is flourishing,” undermining the
government and society and leaving them both “incomparably weaker than was the
case in Soviet times.” Unless radical
measures are taken, Sivkov says, “the country is doomed” and likely sooner and
more radically than was the late USSR.
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