Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 5 – Twice in the
last “long century,” Russia has fallen apart because its leaders overrated the strength
of their own country and got involved in foreign actions Russia could not
afford, Vladislav Inozemtsev says, a pattern that is especially disturbing now
because once again Russia’s leaders appear to be making the same mistake.
In an essay for the Intersection
Project, the Moscow economist says that “the collapse of the Russian Empire and
of the Soviet Union were not accidental: in large measure, both these events
occurred as a result of the exceptional overrating by the powers that be of the
potential strength of their own country” (intersectionproject.eu/ru/article/politics/ne-boyatsya-istorii).
The mistaken assessment of Russia’s
strength in both cases led them to seek foreign expansion, something that was
not justified and to form their economies “on the basis of political utility.” Today, Inozemtsev argues, exactly the same
kind of overassessment of Russia’s strengths and of its involvement abroad
cannot fail to be a cause for concern.
Indeed, he argues, “instead of
escaping from ‘the long 20th century’ in the 1990s, [Russia] has
confidently gone around for a third time according to this paradigm from the past.”
One might have expected better given the attention that Russia’s history is
attracting as it enters the centennial of the 1917 revolutions; but
unfortunately, that history is not being used properly.
Today, he continues, Russia “just
like a century ago is meeting a new year imaging itself as surrounded by
enemies – and as Petersburg then hadn’t yet been renamed Petrograd, one feels that
such the suggestion of a parallel is no accident.” But if history is repeating
itself, it will be “not as a tragedy but as a farce,” although just how much of
one remains to be seen.
In the years before World War I, “the
political and intellectual elite dreamed of its ‘turn to the East,’” something that
ended with Port Arthur and the Tsusima Straits; “the emperor presented himself
as the inspiration for universal disarmament” only to become “one of the chief
actors of a global war.”
The Russian economy of that time had
begun to attract investment from abroad. Indeed, it was one of the directions
in which European investors placed the most confidence. But “after several
decades, it experienced a horrific collapse.” And “Orthodoxy became the state’s
‘ideological entrepreneur,’” only to suffer massive martyrdom shortly
thereafter.
“Today, all this recalls the time in
which we now live; but we do not want to remember the past as it was preferring
instead to draw idealized pictures of a state which fell apart completely by
accident and soon was reborn in an absolutely different form.”
In Soviet times, “in a country which
also was more powerful than today, there existed an authoritarian one-party
system whose leaders had the formal support of almost the entire population …
and who naively thought they could conduct a quick and effective military operation
in a distant Muslim state.”
As Russia enters this anniversary
year, Inozemtsev says, the current powers that be “seek to use all possible
symbols” from the two predecessor states but to do so in a way that some “cleanses”
them of all aspects that might trigger concerns about what the Kremlin is doing
now and where it might lead.
Such a use of the past is “completely
unacceptable,” the Moscow economist says not only because it deprives Russia of
“the most important thing history can give us: the possibility of drawing
lessons for the present” but also because this false history become “a serious obstacle”
for having discussions about it and coming up with ideas about the future.
“The powerful wave of
clericalization objectively blocks scientific progress and technological
modernization,” he suggests, and “the formation of a vertically integrated and
subordinate to the state production structures is destroying the little
genuinely new that appeared over the course of recent decades, markets and
competition.”
Inozemtsev says that he would very
much like to see 2017 become “a catalyst for the formation of a completely new
approach to domestic history, one based
on a mantra not used up to now: a commitment to accuracy” because only that
will allow history to help Russia rather than hold it back.
“The history of Russia,” he writes, “should
not ‘inspire the people to new achievements’ but explain how ‘particular
mistakes’ of the ruling elite twice led to the destruction of the country and ‘certain
miscalculations’ of the command to the loss of almost half of its territory and
40 million lives.”
Such a task, Inozemtsev points out,
will require the promotion of a broad and free discussion, the opening of
archives, and the rise of Russians not afraid to challenge the shibboleths of
today; but unfortunately, the current powers that be are just as afraid of such
things as their predecessors and so Russia may not avoid yet another, third,
disaster.
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