Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 2 – The path Russia began to follow five centuries ago has exhausted itself, Vladimir Pastukhov says; and if the country is to survive, it must undergo a revolution more radical than the one the Bolsheviks carried out in 1917 given that what Lenin and his party did was merely putting a new face on an empire based on repression and aggression.
The revolution Russia needs, the London-based Russian analyst says, will require going back more than five centuries and choosing the alternative path of Russian development that Moscow rejected then: a state based on open cooperation at home and abroad like those of the northern city states of Russia then (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=65429F0802977).
Those states had little chance for survival at that time, Pastukhov says, “but this doesn’t mean that the potential” they represented cannot be the base for Russia’s transformation now. “The resourcefulness, adaptability and initiative of Russian merchants then even today five centuries later are impressive.”
Indeed, he argues, at a time “when the space for the expansion of Russian civilization by force has become extremely limited and any attempts to return to this path only lead to catastrophic and hopeless destruction of resources, turning to this alternative … is almost the only chance to prolong the historical existence of the Russian world.”
According to Pastukhov, “if the Russians want to maintain their unified cultural and political space, they must again demonstrate the same outstanding ability to trade or in the broader sense interact with other worlds.” That won’t be easy because they are accustomed to the alternative; but if they don’t change, their world won’t survive.
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