Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 26 – Yury Apukhtin,
a 70-year old former resident of Kharkiv who was convicted of crimes for his support
of Russian aggression against Ukraine but later sent to Russia in exchange for
Ukrainian prisoners Moscow held, has outlined his vision of Russia’s future as
an empire and a world power.
His words appear in the current
issue of Moscow’s Voyennoye obozreniye, and they are important not so
much as an indication of what the Russian state is capable of but rather for
the insights they provide into the thinking those doing the Kremlin’s dirty
work are being encouraged to have (topwar.ru/165095-russkij-globalnyj-proekt-i-vosstanovlenie-russkoj-imperii.html).
“Russia until recently was one of
the two world superpowers and now is slowly reviving its power,” Apukhtin says.
“In its essence, it is an imperial power and cannot exist in any other way.”
Its borders have expanded and contracted in cycles, including other peoples
within them but “without their assimilation” and allowing them to “retain their
unique features.”
The Russian state, he continues, “was
always a unique empire: the metropolitan center did not steal from the provinces.
On the contrary, it developed them using resources from the center. This
allowed for the formation of a powerful Russian civilization different in
principle from the Western, at the foundation of which lie completely different
mental values.”
This difference has its roots in the
different religions of Russia and the West. Russia’s Orthodoxy promotes
collectivism over individualism, while in contrast, “the customs and traditions
of the peoples of Western civilization are based on individualism and the priority
of personal goals.”
“Attempts by Russian elites at various
points to integrate Russia into Western civilization have not been supported by
society and have ended in failure. We are too different to live together.” That hostility intensified with “the creation
of the Soviet empire” whose communist principles were also based on
collectivism.
“With the collapse of the Union,”
Apukhtin says, “the borderland peoples of the emprie began to flee to their own
national corners. Instead of the imperial ideology of communism, all the
borderlands took up pathetic nationalism which everywhere led to the
degradation of these petty states and the impoverishment of the peoples.”
Meanwhile, in Russia itself, he
continues, efforts to impose nationalism failed because “the Russian people by
its essence is imperial. Nationalism is too small a thing for it and limits its
strivings.” The Yeltsin government did
not recognize this, but Vladimir Putin has brought back imperial ideas and interests
to the center of Russian policy.
The West didn’t like this, but it
hasn’t been able to stop it and won’t, Apukhtins argues. And Russia will continue to revive the empire
not by force although it could but because “the former Soviet borderlands themselves”
will want to return to Russia because of its more attractive civilization.
Given the current international
correlation of forces, he argues, Russia must realize this project of “returning
the former Soviet republics.” That requires that Russia itself develop a powerful
economy capable of helping those former republics and thus making them want to
return. Russia is “slowly” doing so.
“The two post-Soviet Slavic states,
Ukraine and Belarus occupy the primary place in the Russian global project and
without their return one cannot speak about the rebirth of Russian civilization,”
Apukhtin says. “Their loss inflicted
colossal damage on Russia and in fact destroyed Russian civilization.”
“The Russian leadership, having lost
the first round of the struggle for Ukraine to the West, is trying now with the help of the Minsk Agreements not
to allow the fial departure of Ukraine into Western civilization. That is why
Russia has not recognized the independence of the Donbass.
“It is needed as a Trojan horse
for the destruction of the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine from the inside and
as a locomotive for the return of Ukrainian society to its native household
divinities.” (stress supplied) The Donbass will never again be part of Ukraine.
Instead, “it must become a second, alternative Ukraine” and help all of Ukraine
reintegrate with Russia.
The situation with regard to Belarus
is not simple but it must be returned as well. As far as the other former
Soviet republics are concerned, Apukhtin says, Russia has no interest in their
parts like South Ossetia or Transdniestria; it wants to bring all of the
republics out of which these have been carved back into Moscow’s orbit.
He concludes: “Russia is approaching its next cycle of
broadening its territory, and the process of reintegration of the post-Soviet
space and the achievement of the global Russian project require strategic and
long-term actions to prepare the former Soviet republics for unification in
Russian civilization.”
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