Disintegration of Muscovite State Will Lead to Renaissance of Russian Culture, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 10 – Many Russians accept the Kremlin line that the disintegration of the Russian Federation would mean the end of Russian culture. But in fact, Vadim Shtepa says. the reverse is true: the end of the Muscovite state would lead to a more diverse Russian world where  a multitude of Russian-speaking states would come into existence and Russian culture flourish.

            In an interview to Postimees, the editor of the Tallinn-based Russian regionalist portal region.expert says that this outcome is suggested by what happened to the English and French worlds when those two empires disappeared (rus.postimees.ee/7892682/na-kuhne-ot-raspada-rossii-vyigrayut-vse-razve-chto-estoniya-vryad-li-vernet-sebe-ivangorod-schitaet-publicist-vadim-shtepa reposted at region.expert/kitchen-postimees/).

            In other comments, Shtepa says that there has been “a colossal growth of regionalist movements” in the Russian Federation over the last decade, more in the emigration than is yet visible on the ground inside that country. But even the émigré movements are a harbinger of things to come.

            “Russia as an empire fell apart twice in the 20^th century, but both times, a leader appeared who bet on imperial rebirth,” he continues. One can only hope that “God loves a trinity and in the third collapse, Russia will fall apart permanently because every time the empire revives, it begins not only to suppress its own population but the surrounding world.”

            Because of that pattern, Shtepa argues, “the risk of preserving Russia in its former form have begun to exceed the risks of its disintegration” and “the more unitary and imperial it becomes, the greater number of supports of the idea that separate formations into which Russia will disintegration will not represent the threat to the rest of the world that this state now does.”

            Obviously, the collapse of the Russian Federation like any change is not without risk; but the one most often cited is largely invented to scare people off. None of the parts into which the RF is going to fall into, including the remaining one around Moscow, is going to use nuclear weapons.

Doing so in such a relatively small space would be a disaster not only for those who were targeted but also for those who might launch them, Shtepa suggests; and that will represent a constraint that is unlikely to be violated.