Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 10 – Ever more
people are suggesting that Russia faces the possibility of a maidan sometime in
the next few years, but Vladimir Pastukhov says that such a development is “by
definition” impossible because maidans are “always a mix of democratic and
national-liberation movements” and can’t take place in imperial states.
The national-liberation component of
such movements is always directed against the influence of some “very powerful
foreign player” and provides additional energy to the democratic movement.
Indeed, it may be the “main driver” of the maidan as a whole, the London-based
Russian analyst says (echo.msk.ru/programs/albac/2688917-echo/).
That makes a democratic Russian
maidan “impossible by definition,” Pastukhov continues, “because Russia is an
imperial country” and therefore can’t behave in this way because any such
effort would be “an oxymoron” directed against itself. The only possibility
then would be a maidan-like movement directed not toward democracy but toward
fascism.
In many ways, the events of 1991
underscore why a maidan in Russia is impossible. Boris Yeltsin assumed that if
he acted like Ataturk and let the periphery go, this would be “a path to
Russian greatness.” But a decade later, Vladimir Putin replaced him and
replaced that paradigm having decided that Moscow needs the periphery to be
great.
As a result, the London-based
analyst says, change is likely to come to Russia not from the streets but from
within the Kremlin and to appear more like Dmitry Medvedev than Aleksey
Navalny; that is, to be a correction rather than a rejection in the current
Putin course. In the short term, Putin will take from the Belarusian events a
lesson many don’t want him to.
The Kremlin leader will assume on
the basis of what is happening in Belarus today that “any weakening will be the
equivalent of death” for his regime. And he will assume that his best course is
to promote from within his own regime rather than engage in any action that
would bring in new forces from outside.
Some Russian imperialists are
liberal, while others are anything but, Pastukhov suggests. The imperialism of the transition period from
the USSR to the Russian Federation was the former and led to Beloveshchaya.
Under its terms, Russia gave up some of its conquests but hardly all of them.
Like the early Bolshevik variety,
Pastukhov continues, this liberal imperialism “combined in itself hidden
nationalism and an open westernism for show.”
Putin emerged from that milieu but over time he shifted from “Western-style
imperialism” to “imperialism of the Asiatic Byzantine type,” thus throwing
Russia ever further backward.
Under the terms of this latter form,
“our entire country is a colony,” some of it within Russia’s borders and some
beyond that. Some non-Russian parts are
recognized by their people and by Russians as that; other, with a predominantly
Russian-speaking population, like Siberia are also colonies but not always viewed
that way either by their residents or others.
“In fact,” Pastukhov argues, “Russian
civilization is a colonial culture;” but to advance, it must shed its imperial
nature either by allowing more of the periphery to leave and become independent
countries or by transforming itself into a very large “nation state,” albeit
one “without analogies in history.”
If its rulers cannot accept the
former, they must pursue the latter or condemn Russia to backwardness, he says.
That will require the articulation of “a civilized nationalism.” That might be liberal or it might be highly
authoritarian, much as the nation building of Ataturk in Turkey was.
Pastukhov concludes his interview by
saying that he “in general never promimses anyone that Russia after Putin will
be good.” In fact, he says, he is convinced that “Putin will be recalled as a very
soft individual” when compared with the far harder rulers who are likely to
succeed him.
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