Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 16 – Because Vladimir Putin has chosen to turn toward the past rather than
the future as shown most recently by his “having unleashed a war in Ukraine,”
the Kremlin leader has become “the last soldier of the Empire, who will shoot
his last bullet even as the Empire draws its last breath,” according to
Vladimir Pastukhov.
“The
long-term prospects of Russia today are clear perhaps as never before,” the
Russian scholar writes. But “they are so
unattractive that few want to consider them.”
Russia must chose “one of two strategic scenarios.” The only open
questions are which one and how it will be pursued (polit.ru/article/2014/07/16/soldier/).
People
“do not choose the historical period in which they have to live just as they do
not choose their parents,” he continues.
“Russia civilization in all the well-known historical forms known to us
up to now has exhausted itself,” which is no secret but one that nobody wants
to talk about them aloud.
“Attempting
to restore Russian civilization in any of its historical forms – the USSR, the
Empire or Muscovy – is an obvious utopia.” No one can “save an old ‘Russian
civilization,’” but it might be possible to “attempt to establish a new Russian
civilization” very different from its predecessors and thus having a future.
Today,
Russians face what is a relatively restricted choice: They can either attempt
to create this new civilization or Russia will ultimately “disappear without a
trace,” even if in the process it does enormous damage to others and to itself,
Pastukhov argues. If it choose the latter course, “it will be swallowed up by
powerful neighboring cultural platforms – the West European, the Chinese and/or
the Turkic.”
In
the political sphere, he continues, this choice takes the form of one between
“the destruction (conversion) of the Soviet Empire and the reforming of
statehood by creating a post-modern constitutional state” or trying to put off
this end by restoring one or more of the past systems, the choice Putin appears
to have made.
Because
the objective forces pointing in these two directions are so enormous,
Pastukhov insists, Putin has the opportunity to make all the difference by
which path he chooses. But so far, he seems unwilling or unable to choose the
more creative one – and that is a disaster for Russia and Russians.
To a large extent, the pathos of this
situation lies in two paradoxes. The first is that the current generation must
sacrifice its immediate interests if future generations are to have a worthy
future, and the second is that Putin can choose between the two even though he
personally has formulated neither or the choice itself.
In a certain sense, the Russian
scholar says, “Russia has become a hostage to the evolution of the views of
Putin” about this choice. Like many in
the Moscow elite, he has a dual national identity: he feels himself at one and
the same time Imperial and Soviet, “not noting the anti-natural nature and even
historical absurdity of this combination.”
As the Kremlin leader appears to
have forgotten or not understood, “Soviet civilization destroyed Imperial
Russia and was by definition deeply hostile to it.” At the same time, “Soviet
identity was built on the denial of Russian identity and its suppression.” But
what is most curious is something else, Pastukhov says.
Imperial values were “directed
toward a real Russian past, which it canonized,” and Soviet ones were directed
toward “a Russian future which had never existed but which it idealized." Putin in contrast seeks to restore a Russia which never existed and
which no one lost.”
“Such a philosophy
of Russia, while deeply Russophobic toward existing any existing Russian,
raises to the heavens a mythical Russian in the name of which power is
realized.” This approach is in fact a form of bolshevism but one “directed not
toward the future but toward the past.”
Putin has thus
“transformed himself into yet another Russian utopian, who lives by a
mythological consciousness within his own person oikumen which is separated as
if by a Chinese wall from the external and real world.” All Russian leaders, of course, have been
guided by myths, but they have been constructive because they were directed
toward the future.
“The Putin myth,”
in contrast, Pastukhov argues, “is destructive because it is redirected toward
the past and brought down to earth.” It doesn’t inspire anything creative
“except bureaucratic” things. It is, in short, “an unconstructive myth of an
era of collapse.”
Putin is thus “a
tragic figure” because he “leads a generation which lacks any historical
prospects.” Moreover, while he has “practically unlimited tactical
(mobilizational) resources, he is completely lacking the opportunity for
strategic maneuver. He has become a contemporary political Sisyphus, constantly
pushing the rock of restoration to the top of the revolutionary hill.”
And he is
responding to what happened in Russia in the 1990s. After the collapse of the
USSR, Moscow sought to join Europe, but Europe, “Having lost its fear” of
Russia, “did not gain respect” for it.
By the end of the 1990s, Pastukhov said, Russia had simply ceased to be
taken into account by Europe or the West.
Many
like Putin were infuriated by that and have turned back to another traditional
Russian approach to Europe: using force to instill fear and living by the dream
of “the rapid and inevitable collapse of the West” from forces both within it
and beyond. And at present, that
approach seems to be working, but it will ultimately fail.
Indeed,
Pastukhov argues, “all this would be funny if it did not entail the serious
risk” that something really terrible could occur.
“The
only real chance for Russians to break through the historical blockade,” he
says, is “a return to historical creativity … to surprise” the outside world
and itself. But that will be both hard
and take time. For the time being, Putin is trying to turn the clock back. If he
continues, both he and Russia will ultimately fail.
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