Paul
Goble
Staunton, July
22 – Like his various predecessors over the last century, Russian President Vladimir
Putin is leading his country into yet another period of imperial collapse by
his counterproductive efforts to save or even restore that imperial state,
according to the editors of Azerbaijan’s Minval.az weekly.
In an introduction to a special
issue of that news magazine entitled “Putin: From Euphoria to Reality” released
today, the editors argue that Russia has passed through three stages of
imperial decay over the past century, is now thanks to Putin in the fourth, and
will soon enter its final fifth stage (minval.az/news/56787).
As many have pointed out before, the
Russian Empire was fundamentally different than its European counterparts, and
consequently, its demise has been different than theirs. Unlike the European
countries which acquired and then gave up empires abroad, Russia expanded its
empire contiguously and has had far more difficulty in dealing with its
collapse.
The result has been, the editors of
Minval say, that the demise of the Russian empire has spread over a century and
“is at risk of lasting several more decades.”
According to their enumeration, Russia and its neighbors will before the
final demise of the empire pass through five stages.
The first stage began with the start
of World War I and culminated with the 1917 revolution and the succeeding civil
war. The Bolsheviks won that and
succeeded in retaining most of the empire because they, unlike their opponents,
“understood the necessity of a compromise with the national borderlands who
were striving for self-determination.”
“The new empire, the Soviet Union,
appeared as a union of nominally independent states, although real power in
this modernized empire was the communist party apparatus and the nomenklatura.”
But despite that, the ideological basis of the state contained within it a
delayed action mine that ultimately destroyed it.
The second stage began with the
death of this ideology in 1991 and the formation of the Commonwealth of
Independent States. “For [Azerbaijan] and Ukraine,” the weekly says, the CIS
became an instrument for a civilized divorce, [but] for the Kremlin it was the
hope for the restoration of the empire in a new form.”
Moscow devoted enormous efforts to
“convert the new independent states into real satellites of Russia,” a process
the Russian center hoped would allow it to form “a new empire.” But the process of state formation in the
region went its own and very different way, and Moscow’s clumsy efforts to
reverse that, as in Georgia in 2008, only accelerated that process.
The third stage of Russian imperial
dissolution began, the Baku editors say, with Putin’s annexation of Crimea and
sponsorship of a new war in eastern Ukraine.
Those actions “have led to a sharp and final division of Russia,” on the
one hand, and Ukraine, “the chief figure of any of [Russia’s] imperial and
neo-imperial projects.”
In the hopes of rebuilding the empire, Putin
has finally and irreversibly put Russia at odds “with its neighbors and the civilized world” and made
his country “an unattractive model for the non-Russian republics of Russia and
regions of Siberia and the Far East.”
Their moves toward the exit from empire marks the beginning of the
fourth stage.
During the fourth stage, the Minval
editors say, several states of both a national and a “quasi-imperial” type will
appear and then come together for the establishment of a new Russian
commonwealth “which will recall that of the already existing British
Commonwealth” rather than the Commonwealth of Independent States.
But despite those centrifugal
forces, “the Russian Peoples Republic with a capital in Moscow will preserve in
this commonwealth the dominant position and attempt to transform it into a new
federative state.” Fearful of what
nuclear weapons in this state could mean, the international community will
insist on “the establishment of a nuclear free zone on the territory of the
countries of the Commonwealth.”
And the fifth stage of imperial
decay will begin when “one after another” of the members of this new
Commonwealth leave it to go their own ways. “An effort by the Russian Peoples
Republic to interfere with that process by provoking internal conflicts in
Tatarstan and Sakha will lead to its military defeat and temporary isolation,”
the editors say.
After a period of chaos, genuinely
democratic groups will come to power in the Russian Peoples Republic and seek
membership in the European Union and NATO, Minval suggests, membership that
will become possible when Moscow recognizes the independence of the Far Eastern
Republic and the Democratic Republic of Siberia.
With those steps, “the history of
the Russian empire will finally approach its end, and many residents of the
post-Russian space will view neighboring Ukraine as its successor.” Indeed, the
editors say, this could lead to the realization of the dream of the by-then
“half-forgotten second president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.”
That could come into existence by an
agreement between Ukraine, the Kuban Republic, and the South Russian Republic
to form a federal state.
Minval’s description of what has
happened up to now is extremely accurate, but its suggestions about the future
may prove fanciful, although they too are very suggestive. Indeed, even if the
editors’ specifics are wrong, their conceptualization of the process of the
approaching end of the Russian empire points to three important conclusions.
First, each stage of imperial decay
has been triggered by an effort to restore or expand the empire rather than by
those who want to leave it. Second, the
empire’s demise has been slowed when Moscow is willing to compromise rather
than when it seeks to impose its own way.
And third, the decay of the Russian empire has not ended but only
entered a new phase.
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