Russia’s Turn Away from the West Part of a More General Worldwide Trend, Sergey Medvedev Argues

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 3 – Vladimir Putin’s drive to turn Russia away from the West is being debated in Russia with some arguing that it represents his personal choice and others than it is an inevitable result of Russian history and culture. Historian Sergey Medvedev argues that it is neither but rather is part of a tectonic shift in the world that is affecting more than Russia.

            In a comment on his telegram channel, Medvedev says that it seems to him that “the 500-year-old paradigm of the spread of Western civilization and the associated phenomena of catch-up modernization are coming to an end” (t.me/SergeiMedvedevPublic/237 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/putinskij-istoricheskij-razryv-s-zapadom-ne-sluchajnost-a-zakonomernost).

            Medvedev continues: “There is no longer a global civilization. That rested on Western military power which is collapse  before our eyes in the face of new challenges and identities and as a result the world is fragmenting into zones of technological and social progress and zones of archaism” which nonetheless have some of the features of those areas showing progress.

            “In this post-Western and post-progressive world,” the historian argues, “Russia can survive as such a hybrid, remaining a raw material semi-periphery of the world system” while being “an authoritarian third world country with a traditional type of regime” but having cities that feature some of modernity.

            It will remain linked to the world economy because of its export of natural resources and elite urban consumption, he continues; but it will not recognize the existence of “the problem of ‘the inclusion into world civilization.’” That challenge “no longer exists,” according to the Russian historian, because neither Russia nor many other countries accept it as a goal.

            Viewed from this perspective, Medvedev argues, “Putin’s historical beak with the West which is supported by the population and approved by most of the outside world is not an accident but a pattern and perhaps also an attempt to bring together what is now a divided world in the future.”

            In this respect, he concludes, Putin’s “Russia is like a giant piece of ice that has just broken off from Antarctica and is drifting into the unknown. God alone knows how long it will have to travel before it melts.”