Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 5 – Because
imperialism has been and remains at the root of almost all of Russia’s
problems, Aleksandr Skobov says, Russian opposition parties, which today are almost as imperialist as the
Kremlin, must make the right of free and unilateral secession a centerpiece of their
programs.
The
Moscow commentator’s argument on that point comes in an essay posted online
today (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=590C14C756018) in response to two articles by essayist Irina Birn
about Russian imperialism (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59071F8FAABF9
and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=590B77AB2E36D).
Skobov
says that despite some small disagreements at the margins, he fully supports
Birn’s two key arguments. On the one hand, she argues that “the chief generator
of the reproduction of our most serious and negative historical illnesses -- from
authoritarianism, paternalism, and lack of respect for human rights to trivial
corrupt – is the imperial character of Russian statehood.”
“The
Russian state was and remains a prison house of peoples, which were joined
together by force and are kept together by force. That in turn always has required and requires
now a hypertrophic apparatus of force and the systematic application of force.
And that then gives rise to and reproduces all the enumerated delights of our
life,” Skobov says.
And
on the other, he continues, Birn points out that “the majority of
representatives even of the radical extra-systemic opposition, not to mention
its systemic part, has not decided to talk about it,” but rather to remain
silent because so many ordinary Russians and Russian politicians are just as
infected with imperialism as is the Kremlin.
“Beyond
any doubt,” Skobov says, “Russia must be completely ‘recreated’ in the form of
a voluntary confederal union of sovereign subjects which will have the
constitutionally recognized right of free exit from the union without any requirement
for agreement on the part of other subjects.”
That
is, he says, the subjects must have “the right to UNILATERAL SECESSION,” just
as some of them had in the Soviet constitution but with this difference: Unlike
in the Soviet basic law, there must be described precisely a legal method for
realizing that right and that right must be respected.
Because
of the centrality of imperialism as the source of Russia’s problems, Skobov
continues, a demand for such constitutional change must not only become part of
the programs of “the genuinely democratic opposition” but must be treated “as
one of the most important.” And that
demand must be accompanied by another, he suggests.
This
demand must be made real by programmatic calls for the new Russia to give up
all weapons of mass destruction and “above all nuclear ones.” That will provide “not only a guarantee from
attempts at a new imperial revanchism, from attempts to blackmail the world and
destroy the international order.”
It
will also, Skobov argues, change not only Russia but other countries as well “not
only politically but also morally.” Indeed, he concludes, if Russians find the
strength to take these steps, “the world after that will become a different
place.”
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