Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 13 – For the second
time in a century, the Russian empire has disintegrated, and following its
disintegration there have arisen the expected “post-imperial messianic
complexes that have always been characteristic of the Russian political class”
which seek to put the empire back together.
But despite bold declarations like
those of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council which proclaims that Moscow has
begun the process of reclaiming its “imperial space,” Andrey Piontkovsky says,
Russia will not be able to do so – and for the same reason the anti-Bolshevik
Whites were not after the 1917 revolution (svoboda.org/content/article/27792388.html).
Indeed, he writes, for that reason,
the commitment to an undivided empire, “Russia will not ‘dominate’ the
post-Soviet space and will not restore any ‘empire,’ not because new players
have appeared on this space who have greater economic and information resources”
but because Moscow isn’t prepared to offer anyone on that space an attractive
option for themselves.
When the Russian Empire
disintegrated in 1917, the anti-Bolshevik Whites fought under the slogan “for a
single and indivisible Russia,” one that prevented them “even for the sake of
victory over the Bolsheviks for compromises with the national movements on the
territory of the territory of the former Russian empire.”
Their position, Piontkovsky
continues, “deserves respect.” At least they were honest as the Bolsheviks were
not who said they supported the aspirations of the non-Russians only to crush
them later. But the White idea had “one shortcoming: it was not supported by
the Ukrainians or the Caucasians or the Balts or, in general, by any of the
non-Russian peoples.”
As Andrey Amalrik wrote a
half-century ago, “just as the adoption of Christianity extended the existence
of the Roman Empire for 300 years, so too the adoption of communism has
extended for several decades the existence of the Russian Empire.” But that duplicitous and immoral system could
last only so long.
Today’s Russian “’elite,’”
Piontkovsky observes, in the wake of the second collapse of the Russian Empire
in the last century, has “suffered from phantom imperial pains” but once again
is not in a position to offer the non-Russians anything but talk about Russia’s
greatness and its “messianic imperial calling.”
But no one besides perhaps a few
deceived Russians can find much of interest in that, the Russian analyst
argues. The most Moscow and they can expect with that program from the
non-Russians is “indulgent attention” from those who have been bought off with “large
financial rewards.”
“The Russian political ‘elite,’”
Piontkovsky continues, cannot understand that no one on the post-Soviet space
needs it as a teacher of life and a center of attraction.” Not because the
Americans are there causing trouble “but because Putin’s Russia cannot be attractive
for anyone” of the non-Russians.
Almost 20 years ago, Konstantin
Zatulin and his allies argued that the former Soviet republics need to be “forced
to be friends” with Russia (zatulin.ru/sng-nachalo-ili-konec-istorii-k-smene-vex/),
utterly failing to recognize that such a formulation is “an Orwellian oxymoron”
that will generate hatred rather than its opposite.
But such an approach, the Russian
analyst continues, has another consequence: it prompts the non-Russians to look
to other centers of attraction as they pursue their futures. “Ukraine, Moldova
and Georgia see their future in the European economic and political space.”
Even Belarus does as well.
Meanwhile, Piontkovsky continues, “the
khanates of Central Asia are gradually becoming the near abroad” of China, the
result less of Chinese efforts than of Russian mistakes which has pushed these
people away and even created a format, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
which gives Beijing a means of drawing these countries to itself.
Russians are uncomfortable talking
about Central Asia as “’the near abroad’ of China” but now they have to because
“today the Russian political class is experiencing the harshest possible
geo-psychological disintegration, one much sharper than in 1991. Then,
everything seemed temporary; now, it has become obvious that it is forever.”
“The confrontation with the West and
the adoption of a course for ‘a strategic union’ and coalition with China
inevitably will lead not only to the marginalization of Russia but also to its
subordination to the strategic interests of China and to the loss of control
over the Far East and Siberia, initially de
facto and then de jure.”
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