Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 3 – In periods of
rapid change, those who were comfortable in the old world inevitably emerge as
political force, Sergey Ilchenko says. And today, these modern “Luddites” not
only are threatening the future of their own countries but helping to save
Vladimir Putin who has made a bet on the past because regimes of his kind have
no future.
Events as diverse as the desire of
Odessa residents to have Russian tourists come to their city and spend money,
the interest of European corporations to go back to “business as usual,” and
the British vote to leave the EU are all aspects of this “Luddite” impulse, the
Kyiv commentator says (dsnews.ua/world/kak-luddity-kreml-spasayut-01072016153500).
In all struggles of the past with the
future, Ilchenko argues, “the old world doesn’t want to leave. It passionately
works to defend itself.” This has
happened again and again. “The Luddites,” to cite only the most emblematic
example, “destroyed machines hoping to return to the comfortable medieval shops
and customary hierarchies.”
“The dark mass of Russians of the model
1917-1930 killed everyone who stood between it and a return to the peasant
commune strengthened from above by universal serfdom rules. Psychologically,
such an arrangement was very comfortable,” the commentator says. “’Society’ and
‘the bosses’ decided everything allowing the little guy to avoid worries about
tomorrow.”
Moreover, it gave the masses an
excuse when something went wrong: after all, it was the bosses who decide
everything and thus the people at the bottom bore no responsibility. Such an
arrangement was “one of the main values of the USSR” and it is again “one of
the most important values of contemporary Russia in the form of ‘stability.’”
“Waves of resistance to the new
inevitably arise in any era of change,” Ilchenko says. “Today on an enormous
space, including the former USSR and parts of the Near East are being affirmed
the realities of a new world.” But many are “categorically” against this. They
oppose change in their own societies and reach out to “backward tribes” abroad
who share their fears.
These two worlds, one looking
forward and the other looking past, which are “competing today cannot coexist
in one space. They will always be at war – cold, hot, economic, ideological,
hybrid and who knows what else. Between them, there cannot be ‘peaceful
coexistence’ – they exclude each other absolutely in all aspects of life.”
“One of these systems is based on
the vertical of power and the transfer of authorities from top to bottom. Here
the main value is the vertical itself,” one in which “those above are living
gods and those below are nothing” and
where “in exchange for personal freedoms, the system gives guarantees in the
form of a very predictable future,” one like the past.
Such a system is “very stable” at
least in the minds of many because people are able to avoid “difficult
decisions” and any “need to change themselves or to adapt to rapid changes” in
the world around them, the Ukrainian commentator continues. Thus, the main
support for such systems comes from below, from those who “suffer from changes
more than others.”
The other opposing system is based
on “horizontal ties among formally equal property owners. At the basis of this
equality is a recognition of any property as ‘holy and untouchable.’ All other
rights and freedoms of the human personality are the result of this
recognition. This is what contemporary Western democracy is.”
But in Europe today and not only in
Europe, there are millions of people frightened by change and want to stop
it. What can they do? Erect borders
against outsiders and try to restore the way things used to be so that they can
be comfortable. And to that end, they want to reach out to others who share
their fear of change and who want to “preserve the old.”
There are millions of such people in
Europe and elsewhere, Ilchenko continues. They powered the rise of Hitler and
Mussolini, and their fear of the future has in no way gone away or their
willingness to reach agreements with like-minded leaders like Vladimir Putin.
But ultimately, such agreements will fail because of the incompatibility of the
two systems.
“If we describe the situation of
Russia and the West in terms of conflictology,” he says, “we see a zero-sum
conflict,” one that “can end only by the defeat of one of the sides: however
much one side wins, the other side loses.
No firm peace without the final defeat of one of the sides is possible
in such a conflict.”
Of course, there can be temporary
armistices, but then “the war will restart.” Thus, “when people in Russia say
that the West wants to destroy it, they are right. But Russia in its turn wants
the destruction of the West. Because the values and way of life of Russia and
the West are incompatible in a common space.”
“Russian
society is ideologically sterile” because democracy but not a system based on a
flight from the future can permit itself various groups, including those who “demand
its destruction, but by democratic means.”
But in totalitarian societies, “everything is simpler and harsher,” as
was true in Nazi Germany and is true in Russia today.
And those in Europe today who think
they can compromise with Russia are in exactly the same position as those who
thought they could compromise with Hitler, the Ukrainian commentator says. They
do not understand that the current conflict cannot be resolved without the
defeat of one side because it is an existential one.
“Today, Ukraine is fighting for its
survival both as a democracy and as a nation.”
The Ukrainian army is fighting, but behind the lines is emerging “’an
everyday separatism,’” the reflection of the survival among some Ukrainians of a
desire to avoid taking responsibility and having the bosses decide everything.
Their behavior is appalling,
Ilchenko says. Those who think it is perfectly fine to have Russians come and
spend money in Odessa fail to see that this is just as strange and awful as
imagining “Japanese tourists in the US two years after Pearl Harbor!”
Ukrainians are “as before balanced
one step from defeat,” Ilchenko says. “Yes, Ukraine has not surrendered and is
fighting. And not only at the front … But the results achieved by us to date
are unsatisfactory. The system of democratic values in Ukraine although it hasn’t
been defeated has not won either” and that opens the way to defeat.
If that happens, “we will be thrown
back to Russia and swallowed by it becoming yet again a colony of Moscow.”
Consequently, “the most unforgiveable illusion is the illusion of the possibility
of peace now. That can’t happen until the current Nazi Russia is defeated as
Nazi Germany once was.”
It can’t happen until “Russian
society from top to bottom is punished for its present-day militarism and
passes through a full cycle of de-Nazification. Only then will it be possible
to think about peace and compromise and only if this de-Nazification will be
thoroughgoing and successful.”
“There cannot be a dialogue between
firm supporters of the two mutually exclusive systems of value,” Ilchenko
argues. “Dialogue is possible only with those who vacillate in their choice of
values.” There are many of these in Ukraine and not only there but in many
Western countries as well.
Consequently, “unmasking the lie
about the possibility of peaceful coexistence with present-day Russia must
become not only a propagandistic but all-cultural task,” he says. And Ukrainians must “also bring out vision of
the situation to the rest of the world. We must … declare “there is no alternative
to the struggle with Nazism that has raised its head in Moscow.”
Indeed, he concludes, the threat of
this Russian state with its desire to go backwards rather than forwards is “much
more serious” although in many ways quite similar to the horrors of the Islamic
State that most people around the world have already recognized as an
existential threat.
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